Consumer Payments Explorer

This interactive tool allows you to explore the payment methods of Australians. The data come from the Reserve Bank's Consumer Payments Survey. The survey is run every three years and asks a representative sample of 1,000 Australians to record every payment they made during a week.

You can view total payment trends or focus on a specific criterion.

You can also Download complete data 129KB.

Note: Totals may not sum to 100 due to rounding.

Terminology

Payment method

Payment method refers to the method consumers used to make a payment such as cash, debit or credit card, internet/phone banking, cheque, BPAY, gift/prepaid card and ‘other’ methods including Buy Now Pay Later, PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, POLi, welfare cards, bank cheques, Cabcharge, petrol cards, etc.

In tables with debit and credit card transactions the payment channel is also listed. These are defined as:

  • Insert card: consumer inserted or swiped the card in the card reader
  • Online: consumer used an app or a website to make a payment while not physically present at the merchant
  • Tap card: consumer tapped or waved the card on or near the card reader
  • Tap device: consumer tapped or waved a mobile phone or wearable (e.g. a smart watch, watch, jewellery or other device) on or near the card reader
  • Other: used another way such as scanning a QR code with a mobile phone, mail order or giving card details over the telephone

Income quartile

Income quartile refers to the measure of household income of consumers. Consumers are ranked from lowest income to highest income, and then grouped into 4 income quartiles (Q1 being lowest and Q4 being highest). Because older consumers generally have higher incomes the figures for income quartiles are adjusted for respondent's age. Each quartile contains approximately 25 per cent of consumers.