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Forty-one percent of consumers used cash less often in June 2008 than they did two years earlier, according to consulting and research firms Hitachi Consulting and BAI Research, which conducted the 2008 Study of Consumer Payment Preferences, released in October. Researchers based their findings on Internet surveys of 3,308 U.S. consumers. Consumers carry an average of four credit cards in their wallets, but they use only 2.2 of those cards to make purchases in a particular month, according to the study. Fifty-four percent of respondents said they pay all credit card balances in full each month, leaving the remaining 46% carrying a balance on one or more cards. Respondents made some 37% of in-store payments using signature- and PIN-debit cards. Some 45% of consumers prefer PIN debit, 35% prefer signature debit and 20% have no preference, according to the report. Survey respondents used gift or prepaid cards for only 4% of in-store purchases, about the same percentage as in 2005. First Data Corp., MasterCard Worldwide, Metavante Technologies Inc. and Discover Financial Services' Pulse network sponsored the study. Hitachi Consulting is owned by Japan-based Hitachi Ltd. BAI is part of the Chicago-based Bank Administration Institute.
