Online payments, mobile wallet remain growing

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the COVID-19 lockdowns may have provided an online payment boom that will last for some time.

The bank’s annual Payment Systems Board Annual Report, released on Wednesday, noted the share of online retail sales increased sharply during the lockdowns, to as much as 15 per cent of all sales.

As of the June quarter that had ebbed to just over 10 per cent, which is still up from about seven per cent at the end of 2019.

“This suggests that the pandemic may have induced a permanent change in shopping preferences for some consumers, which reinforces the trend increase in the use of electronic payment methods,” the report says.

The report also quantifies a few other trends in what it calls Australia’s evolving retail payment landscape.

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In the March quarter, 25 per cent all debit and credit card transactions were made using smartphone or smartwatch mobile wallet services such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. That’ s up from 10 per cent two years ago.

Cash has been declining for years but is still important for some people, such as older Australians, and its usage has partially recovered as pandemic-related restrictions have eased, the RBA says.

Last year, cash was used in 27 per cent of all in-person transactions, up from 23 per cent in 2020, the report says.

Surveys conducted by the RBA indicate cash acceptance by retailers with a physical presence has fallen to 94 per cent in June, compared to 99 per cent in February 2020.

The report also says Australia’s New Payments Platform, the instantaneous bank payment system that launched in 2018, is now processing 25 per cent of all account-to-account payments, from 22 per cent a year earlier.

Over the past year, the NPP processed more than a billion transactions worth more than $1 trillion, the RBA says.

With AAP. (Content has been tweaked for length and style.)