It’s Still Card-First in the U.S.

U.S. consumers are nothing if not habit-driven. New research from Global Payments Inc. suggests that credit and debit cards accounted for 49% of all online shopping and 71% of in-store shopping in 2025, as reported in the 2026 edition of the Global Payments Report. That is virtually unchanged from 49% and 69%, respectively, in 2024, according to the 2025 edition of the report.

That may not be the case over the next few years as the report forecasts direct use of payment cards for e-commerce spending will drop to 42% by 2030 and in-store use will decrease to 61%. What will eat at today’s usage levels? Digital wallets, Global Payments says. In previous years, the report was released by Worldpay, which Global Payments acquired in January.

That’s especially so in online shopping where wallets already garner 40% of use compared to 32% for credit cards and 16% for debit cards.

For in-store spending, the physical card, whether credit or debit, is also projected to lose share against digital wallets. That forecast is for 36% of point-of-sale transactions to be made with a credit card by 2030, down from 40% in 2025, with debit card share going from 28% to 25% in four years. Digital wallets will take up some of the slack in that channel, too, going from 17% last year to 26% by 2030.

 “For Gen Z, digital wallets and tap-to-pay experiences are already the norm. As their spending power grows, the way they pay today is a window into the future of payments,” Bob Cortopassi, Global Payments president and chief operating officer, says in a statement.

But as the report says, digital-wallet adoption lags in stores where cards and cash have the upper hand.

“Card-led wallets Apple Pay and Google Wallet helped propel wallets to 17% of POS value in 2025, compared to the 33% global average. While consumer habits for payment with cards and cash remain sticky, our wallet growth forecast is for 11% CAGR 2025-2030, four times that of POS growth overall,” the report says.

U.S. consumers, however, still favor physical cards. Even within the growing use of digital wallets, cards are the favored funding source, which could benefit from a projected $4.1 trillion in digital wallet-based U.S. spending by 2030, a 64% increase from 2025, Global Payments says.

The report also relayed that in 2024, the latest year for which data is available, Visa Inc. held 58% of the U.S. card share, followed by Mastercard at 24%, American Express Co., 8%, and Discover, Diners Club and debit networks at 9%. That compares to 61% for Visa in 2023, 25% for Mastercard, 9% for AmEx, and 7% each for Discover and Pulse, and 3% for others.