Findings from Federal Reserve Bank in COVID-19 Reported (Payment Flexibility Among Us Consumers: In-person Payment Trends During the Covid-19 Pandemic): Coronavirus – COVID-19

2026 SEP 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at CDC & FDA Daily -- New research on Coronavirus - COVID-19 is the subject of a report. According to news reporting originating in Atlanta, Georgia, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “This work studies in-person payment trends among U.S. consumers from 2017 to 2022, a period of time centered around the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In that year, the ability to limit in-person payments, and thus avoid public outings, reduced the risk of contracting the virus, thereby linking payment flexibility to health outcomes in an unprecedented way.”

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Federal Reserve Bank, “This paper uses data from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, an annual survey of financial transactions from a representative sample of U.S. consumers, to better understand these dynamics. A look at trends across age, education, and income groups, reveals that in-person payment rates, which were decreasing by about 5 percent per year from 2017 to 2019, dropped by almost 25 percent from 2019 to 2020, before a slight recovery in the following two years. Simultaneously, the odds of an in-person payment dropped by about 20 percent during the pandemic, though this represents only 40 percent of the overall, six-year decrease. While temporal trends are generally consistent across demographic strata, there is evidence that greater educational attainment corresponds to a relatively larger drop in share of payments made in-person in 2020. A second analysis, limited to 2019 and 2020 data and factoring in consumers’ payment instrument adoption as well as the state-level COVID-19 conditions during data collection, suggests that the degree of adaptability varied across consumer groups.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Individuals with greater income levels or credit card access generally showed a proportionally greater reduction of in-person payment rates, especially in high-risk COVID-19 conditions.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Payment Flexibility Among Us Consumers: In-person Payment Trends During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Review of Economics of the Household, 2026. Review of Economics of the Household can be contacted at: Springer, One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, Ny, United States. (Springer - www.springer.com; Review of Economics of the Household - http://www.springerlink.com/content/1569-5239/)

Our news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Marcin Hitczenko, Federal Reserve Bank, Res, 1000 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309, United States.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-026-09872-y. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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