U.S. Cashless Statistics (2026): Is America Going Cashless?

Highlights. 51.6% of American adults make no cash purchases in a typical week.

An estimated 73% of Americans used cash for few (if any) purchases over the last 12 months.
In a year, the share of cashless American consumers grows 12.5%.
63.9% of Americans expect a cashless future; among them, 43.8% believe a cashless society is very likely.
Globally, point-of-sale transactions are 85% cashless in 2024; trends indicate that 89% of POS transactions will be cashless by 2030.

Bar Graph: Share of Cashless American Consumers, i.e. share of Amerians who use no cash in a typical week, including the years 2015 (24%) to 2022 (41%) with estimates and projections from 2023 (44%) and 2027 (60%) according to eMarketer

Cashless Consumer Statistics

By 2026, 55.7% of American consumers will use no cash in a typical week, according to recent trends.

An estimated 14.5% of American consumers will not use any cash at all in 2025.
In 2022, 11.0% of American consumers did not use any cash at all.
The share of American adults using little to no cash on a weekly basis grew an estimated 25.9% between 2022 and 2025 for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.97%.
As of 2022, 73% of Americans made less than half of their purchases in cash.
From 2016 to 2022, the share of Americans using cash for less than half of their purchases increased 57.4% (CAGR 7.86%).
28.0% of all American consumers in 2025 believe a future cashless society is very likely.
The share of Americans who say a cashless society is more likely than not increased 4.68% between 2016 and 2025.
Those who say a cashless society is very likely, however, represent a shrinking share of consumers (down 6.67% from 2016).

Bar Graph: Cashless Share of Global POS Payments, where POS is point-of-sale, from 2018 (73%) to 2024 (85%) according to Worldpay with estimates/projections to 2028 (88%)

Cashless Consumer Demographics

Data indicate that consumers under 45 and those with higher household incomes are significantly less likely to use cash.

Consumers aged 35 to 44 years will use cash in 8.50% of payments in 2025.
35- to 44-year-olds are 2.63% less likely to use cash than consumers aged 18 to 24.
Consumers aged 18 to 24 years will use cash to make 8.73% of their purchases in 2025.
25- to 54-year-olds are the most likely to use credit cards; it is the primary payment method among 35% of this age group.
Consumers with annual household incomes exceeding $150K use cashless payment methods most often (91% of the time; they use cash for ≤1% of bill payments).
Households with annual incomes between $50K and $100K make cashless payments at least 86% of the time (they use cash for less than 5% of bill payments).
Low-income households (with less than $25K annual income) use cashless payments for 76% of purchases.

Grouped Bar Graph: Share of Cashless Purchases by Select Age Group from the years 2019 & 2022 according to the U.S. Federal Reserve with estimates for 2025

Cashless Payment Statistics

Cashless payment options continue to grow in popularity in the U.S. and worldwide.

An estimated 85.7% of worldwide POS transactions are cashless as of 2025.
In the U.S., 86.0% of all transactions were cashless in 2024.
Projections indicate that by 2028, 95.8% of payments in the U.S. and 89.0% of global POS transactions will be cashless.
From 2018 to 2024, the share of cashless POS transactions worldwide increased 17.8% (CAGR 2.77%).
In 2018, 74% of U.S. payments and 73% of global POS transactions were cashless.

Bar Graph: Global Value of Cash POS Payments in billions from 2018 ($11.6) to 2024 ($65.67) according Worldpay with estimates to 2028 ($4.83)

Credit Card Statistics

Credit cards are the most popular form of payment among most American consumers.

78% of U.S. shoppers prefer to pay with cards over cash for in-person payments.
Consumers are more than twice as likely to use credit cards rather than cash for any given transaction.
Consumers with annual household incomes exceeding $150,000 use credit cards for 51% of all payments and 24% of bill payments.

100% Stacked Bar Graph: Primary Payment Methods by Age Group according to the share of the age group most likely to use each payment method in 2022 according to the U.S. Federal Reserve

Digital Cashless Statistics

Some mobile payment apps function similarly to credit or debit cards, and some digital wallets may support traditional credit cards.

Data indicate there may be over 6.0 billion digital wallet users worldwide in 2030.
Similar projections place the 2026 global value of digital wallet transactions at $12 trillion.
Apple Pay is the #1 most popular digital wallet accounting for 92% of mobile wallet debit transactions in 2021.
PayPal is the #1 most popular online payment processor, and 94% of users are smartphone owners.

Pie Chart: Global POS Payments Distribution 2024 according to Worldpay

Cashless Accessibility Statistics

Access to cash may be in decline based on trends of the early 2020s.

There are approximately 530,000 ATMs in the U.S. as of 2024.
The number of ATMs in the U.S. increased 17.7% between 2020 and 2024, with the low ATM number in 2020 due to COVID-related closures.
An estimated 11.9% of banked households will use ATMs at least once in 2025.
Between 2017 and 2023, the share of banked households using ATMs declined 29.2% (CAGR -5.60%).
An estimated 15.3 million American households will make use of ATMs or bank kiosks in 2025.
The number of households using ATMs declined by over 6.75 million between 2017 and 2024.

Unbanked Consumer Statistics

Cash is still critical to some, such as the estimated 5.15 million “unbanked” U.S. households (i.e., those without active bank accounts).

Approximately 3.86% of U.S. households are unbanked as of 2025.
The share of unbanked households in the U.S. declines at an annual rate of 4.18%.
Between 2009 and 2023, the share of American households without bank accounts declined 44.7% (CAGR -4.15%).
Unbanked Americans accounted for 8.2% of households in 2011.

Pie Chart: Global POS Payments Distribution Projections for 2030 according to Worldpay

Cash User Statistics

Some consumers still use cash for most or all of their purchases, but the number declines 14.7% annually.

2.9% of American consumers will use cash for all of their purchases in 2025.
A total of 16.8% of American consumers will use cash for at least half of their purchases.
Cash-only consumers represent 17.9% of those who will use cash for at least half of all purchases.
The share of American consumers using only cash declined 42.0% from 2022 to 2025.
From 2016 to 2022, the share of American consumers using only cash declined 58.3% (CAGR 13.6%).

These data and insights were compiled by the Capital One Shopping team based on publicly available data.

Cashless Statistics