A new study finds that a quarter of Americans say they rarely, if ever, carry cash on them anymore.
The research, sponsored by the credit card company Capital One, surveyed 2,000 American adults. While 1 in 4 participants overall most often go cashless, the number jumped to a third when it came to millennial respondents (in this study, those between 18 and 35 years old). In fact, millennials were 41% more likely to call paying with cash “inconvenient.” When compared to the other age demographics in the study, they were the least likely to call carrying cash with them “very necessary.”
When it comes to shopping habits, respondents estimated that cash purchases make up less than a quarter of their expenditures in a given week. Only 21% said cash is their most common form of payment. On the other hand, the survey showed that 41% of respondents carry cash regularly.
The researchers found that for Americans who do carry cash, they keep $25 on average in their wallets. When asked to survey their wallets at the time of being surveyed, however, one in six participants had no cash at all, while two in five had less than $10 on them.