Irish shoppers spend an average of €51m a day in contactless payments

Continued preference for digital payments over cash

The average payment value has reached €17.05, up from €16.40 a year earlier.

There is a continued consumer preference for contactless payments in Ireland with new figures showing an 18% jump in the method of payment in the first quarter of this year.

Irish consumers now carry out an average of €51m in contactless payments every day with the average payment value reaching €17.05, up from €16.40 a year earlier.

The figures from the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) shows the volume of contactless payments rose by 17.6% year-on-year to 268.7 million in the first three months of 2023, reaching three million payments a day.

The figures show online and mobile banking payments have also increased rising 6.2% year on year to 36.4 million in the first quarter. Ireland has the fourth highest internet banking penetration in the EU after Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. 

"The report shows the continued shift by consumers towards contactless payments with volumes surging by nearly 18% in Q1 2023," Gillian Byrne, head of Payments at the BPFI said.

"At the same time, we also saw the value of these payments increasing by 22% to almost €4.6bn or €51m per day. Interestingly we can also see that the growth in contactless payments continued to outpace total card payment growth, which rose by 10.6% year on year to 463.4 million, according to the Central Bank of Ireland."

"With the data also showing that 86.3% of people aged 16 or over saying they used internet banking, this again highlights consumers’ continued preference for digital banking," she said.