One thing you may have noticed since the pandemic is a waning preference for cash among both consumers and merchants. See related: What are the differences between a debit card and a credit card? Debit cards at a glanceĪccording to the 2019 Federal Reserve Payments Study 1, “Debit cards, including both prepaid and non-prepaid, were used almost twice as often as credit cards in 2018, but the value of credit card payments exceeded the value of debit card payments by almost 30%.” While there were certainly some winners and some losers, the crisis affected nearly every aspect of our economy, and we are only just now beginning to recover.Īs we recover, it’s still unclear how our usage of debit cards has been affected. The COVID-19 crisis was easily the greatest economic disruption since the Second World War and perhaps even the Great Depression.
