US Payment Diary Findings 2022

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has published its diary of consumer payment choice based on its 2021 research ¹. The diary was kept in October 2021 at a time when average COVID-19 infections ranged between 72,000 and 110,000 infections per day. The impact of the pandemic was, therefore, still being felt, albeit in its second year.

The Federal Reserve has recorded payment diaries every October since 2016 but during the pandemic had supplemental diaries in April 2020, August 2020 and April 2021. This summary only looked at October surveys.

While the key finding was that total payments, cash payments and the number of payments made in person, referred to as in-person payments, increased compared with 2020, the change was so small that it was not statistically significant. It is possible though, to start to hypothesise about the impact of the pandemic.