More than half of contactless payments are now made using mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, rather than credit or debit cards, according to new data.
More than 1.4 billion contactless payments were made for goods and services in the first half of this year, according to the Banking Payments Federation of Ireland (BPFI) Payments Monitoring Report released on Friday. The total amount of payments was 24.8 billion euros, more than half of which were made using mobile wallets.
According to the study, smartphones are the most popular way to pay for goods and services.
Gillian Byrne, head of payments at BPFI, said the volume of contactless card payments is increasing, with “approximately 86.1% of all POS card payments in the country being contactless”. He pointed to regional differences highlighted in the report, such as the number of contactless payments per person in Dublin being 40% higher than the national average of 395.
Contactless payment covers all bank cards with contactless payment methods. Mobile wallet refers to online payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
A person in Ireland made 142 payments with a mobile wallet in the first six months of this year, either via a smartphone or another mobile device such as a smartwatch.
The average amount spent on each mobile wallet was 18.93 euros, 25% higher than the average amount spent on contactless cards.
Dublin has the highest number of contactless payments per capita in the country, at 394. It accounted for 39.6% of all contactless payments recorded in the first six months, and the average value of a contactless payment was the lowest in the state at €16.52.
Carlow was followed by Dublin with a payout of 329 per person, followed by Limerick with a payout of 287 and Waterford with a payout of 282.
Dublin and Carlow also took the top two spots in the state for the most mobile wallet usage in the first six months of this year, coming in at 214th and 152nd respectively.
Mobile wallet payments were least common in Roscommon and Monaghan, with 52 and 61 payments made per person in the first six months of this year.
Some contactless cards have limits on the amount you can use for each transaction. The average transaction value for this unrestricted contactless card was €82.60 until June 2024.
According to the data, 282 contactless payments were made per person in Ireland with Irish Cards, with an average value of €17.05 million. In total, approximately 1.5 billion contactless payments were made in the 12-month period, valued at approximately €24.8 billion.
Byrne said BPFI expects the trend towards digital and online payments to continue “as consumers prefer smooth, convenient and fast digital payment methods.”
According to the Consumer Sentiment Banking Survey conducted by the Ministry of Finance in August this year, two-thirds of adults said they use online banking weekly.
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