New research from the Central Bank reveals that newer payment methods such as contactless card payments and digital mobile wallet card payments now account for an increasing share of total card transactions.
Contactless card transactions accounted for 84% cent of all Point of Sale (POS) card transactions on a volume basis.
This is according to the Central Bank's new Behind the Data figures on credit and debit card spending data for Irish household.
The figures also show the total value of monthly card transactions - including cash withdrawals - averaged about €6.8 billion a month in the first half of 2023.
This represented an average volume of 162 million card transactions a month.
Contactless card payments accounts for over three-quarters of the total volume of card payments excluding online/remote payment transactions.
There were an average 103 million contactless card transactions recorded a month over the six month period, with an equivalent value of €1.7 billion, the Central Bank said.
Today's data shows that mobile wallets - such as Apple Pay and Google Pay - are increasingly used as a payment method. Mobile wallet card payments accounted for 32% of all card transactions undertaken at a POS terminal, the Central Bank said.
But it added that in value terms, contactless card and mobile-wallet card payments account for a smaller proportion of overall POS card payment transactions, accounting for 51% and 22 %, respectively.
It said this is due to the fact that contactless card payments are still more generally used for lower value payments.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank said that 53% of all card payments by value occurred in Dublin. Card spending in other large cities such as Cork and Galway rank second and third highest respectively.
Dublin is also top of the scale with total card payments equating to €12.6m per 1,000 population, while Offaly is the lowest ranking county for card spending by population.
Today's figures also show that cash withdrawals per 1,000 population was highest in Carlow followed by Dublin, while Westmeath was the lowest ranking county for cash withdrawals in the six month period under review.
