The use of smartphones and smartwatches, as the preferred payment method in Ireland, is continuing to grow.
New figures show that contactless payments accounted for 87.9% of all point-of-sale (POS) card payments during the first half of the year.
Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) said 58.2% of the payments were made using mobile wallets rather than cards, which is an increase of just under 20% on the same period in 2024.
It means there were almost 454 million mobile wallet payments during the first six months of 2025, using services such as Apple Pay or Google Pay.
The BPFI Payments Monitor also shows that in the year to the end of June, 1.6 billion contactless POS payments, valued at €28.3 billion, were made in shops, restaurants and other retail outlets.
Dublin had the highest number of contactless and mobile wallet payments per capita in Ireland in the 12 months ending June, at 392 and 238 respectively, accounting for 39.1% of all contactless payments and 41.8% of mobile wallet payments.
By contrast, Roscommon had the lowest contactless per capita at 139.
The Head of Payments at the BPFI said contactless payments "continue to be very popular with Irish consumers, accounting for almost nine out of ten point-of-sale card payments."
Gillian Byrne said the use of smartphones and smartwatches are growing in popularity and are "the preferred payment device over physical cards for many consumers."
"As the popularity of contactless payments has grown, cash usage has fallen in recent years with less than half of POS payments in Ireland made in cash in 2024," she added.
