Press release
Minister Donohoe welcomes report benchmarking Ireland’s payments industry
Published on
Last updated on
Published on
Last updated on
The Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD, has today, (Monday), published a report prepared by Indecon International Economic Consultants benchmarking Ireland’s payments industry.
The report was published today at an event launched by the Minister. Other speakers included Éric Ducoulombier, Head of Retail Financial Services at the European Commission; Anne Boden, CEO of Starling Bank and Alan Gray, Managing-Partner at Indecon.
The report shows that Ireland has made very significant progress in recent years in moving from a cash-intensive economy with a rapid increase in the take-up of electronic payments.
Ireland now ranks tenth out of 27 EU Member States for the combined use of card payments, credit transfers and direct debits. On average, consumers make 237 electronic payments a year and write only 8 cheques.
The volume of cheques has halved in less than six years and, while cash remains an important form of payment, there has been a notable reduction in the amount of cash withdrawn from ATMs over this time.
The report shows that payment cards play an important role in how we pay, and that Irish people have really taken to debit cards and contactless payments. Debit cards account for 74 per cent of the nearly 6 million cards in issuance.
Notwithstanding the €30 transaction limit, the value of contactless card payments exceeded €1 billion in the second quarter of last year.
Indecon notes a risk that some segments of Ireland’s society could be excluded by an accelerated move to electronic payments, though it also finds that access to a bank account has increased dramatically over the last decade.
Speaking at the launch of the report, the Minister said:
“I welcome today’s publication of [internal-link 6206 | Indecon Report on Benchmarking of Ireland’s Payments Industry ]. I note the efficiency and cost savings associated with the move to electronic payments and I am pleased to see the significant progress Ireland has made in the take-up of electronic payments’.
“Irish enterprise generally compares well to other European countries in terms of offering and using electronic payments, and a particularly notable feature of the Irish payment industry is the regional location of many firms.”
ENDS