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.
The data is split into categories with options to explore by a demographic, payment
amount or payment purpose.
Alternatively select all to view the complete set of data on All transactions.
Select to view transactions by payment method or the year they occurred.
Select to view transactions within an age group, by payment method, or the year they
occurred.
Select to view transactions within an income bracket, by payment method, or the year they
occurred.
Select to view transactions within a domain, by payment method, or the year they
occurred.
Select view by the value of the transaction, by payment method, or the year they
occurred.
Select view by the purpose of the transaction, by payment method, or the year they
occurred.
This refers to the payment basis. Select to view by number or value.
The share of payments made by number counts every payment equally.
The share of payments made by value weights payment methods by the size of payments.
Related Information
Consumer Payments Survey
Data in this explorer 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.
For more details please see:
Consumer Payment Behaviour in Australia
and
Cash Use and Attitudes in Australia .
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 such 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 readerOnline : consumer used an app or a website to make a payment while not physically present at the merchantTap card : consumer tapped or waved the card on or near the card readerTap 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 readerOther : 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.
