Credit Card Micropayments on the Rise, Especially Among the Young

Visa announced last week a 17% rise in card usage for purchases

of under $25, and a Visa survey suggested those numbers would

rise, especially among younger consumers. Visa reported that

its volume on purchases less than $25 totaled $27.3 billion

Visa's new survey found that 55% of the 1000+ respondents use

payments cards for small ticket items less than $25, with convenience

and ease of use being their leading reasons for doing so. The

survey suggests that an increasing number of these purchases

are being made with debit cards versus credit cards. For consumers

between the ages of 18 and 25, 44 percent of these purchases

were made with debit cards, versus 33 percent of such purchases

addition, the survey found that 70 percent of consumers ages

18-25 are willing to use payment cards for purchases less than

is aggressively pushing the use of credit and debit cards for

small purchases. Key components of this strategy include waiving

the signature requirement for transactions under $25 and cutting

the credit and debit interchange rates that merchants pay for