A survey of payment behaviour, conducted for the Bank of Estonia, found that people in the country are very satisfied with the payment solutions available to them – they particularly appreciate how convenient and up-to-date the solutions are, and also the security of those solutions; there was some concern about the activity of scammers.
The majority of residents of Estonia, at 87% of respondents, make their everyday purchases mainly in shops. Only 3% of respondents mainly make those purchases online, and that is the same as it was two years ago. Online purchases have started to become preferred for larger purchases like furniture and home electronics. Although 40% of respondents choose to make their purchases exclusively in bricks-and-mortar shops, a third are happy to make large purchases online, and a fifth prefer to use only online shops.
Bank cards remain the most common form of payment and are used for 69% of payments, but physical bank cards are used much less than they were two years ago, when they made 82% of payments. The respondents who prefer to pay by smartphone or smartwatch instead of bank card have increased to 23%, and the share of those aged under 30 who pay with smart devices was even higher at 55%. Cash was preferred for payments by 8% of respondents, down from 10% in previous years, and older people pay in cash more often than young people.
The payment survey asked for the first time whether there have been any problems with points of sale accepting cash. The response was that 57% of respondents have not had a cash payment refused in the past year, but 14% had experienced this, and a very small number of them had experienced it frequently. The problem was encountered most commonly by people who often use cash, while 28% of respondents said they had not had to use cash at all for paying with during the preceding year.
Even though most people don’t use cash almost at all, a majority of Estonians are against a cashless society. Photo by Ali Mkumbwa on Unsplash.
About 2/3 against a cashless society
For making payments to other people, such as family and friends, 39% of respondents preferred their mobile phone bank and 36% their online bank, which is a reverse of the preferences of a couple of years ago. This division is particularly marked among young people, as 71% of respondents under the age of 30 use the mobile bank and only 13% use the internet bank. Cash was preferred for personal payments by 23% of respondents.
Support for the idea of a cashless society has been decreasing steadily and was only 22% in the latest survey, while 64% of respondents opposed.
As many as 89% of respondents want to get paper receipts for purchases.
Cash is used for holding savings by 32% of respondents, with adults under 30 using cash most often for savings at 46%. Three quarters of respondents say they want to be ready for an emergency, while other reasons for holding cash were wanting to give it as a gift or keeping a reserve for cases where it is not possible to pay by transfer.
Many people are concerned about scams and it shows how widespread the problem is, but also that people are aware of it and consequently act more cautiously. Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.
People act more cautiously due to scams
The opinion given by Estonian residents of the payment solutions offered by the banks is very high. They scored the payment solutions at 4.4 out of 5 for convenience and modernity, and 4.3 out of 5 for security.
At the same time, a lot of respondents expressed concern about how active scammers are, which has the consequence that users of payment systems do not feel secure. There were also some respondents who have suffered a loss to fraudsters.
The concern about scams shows how widespread the problem is, but also shows that people are aware of it and consequently act more cautiously.
The survey of the payment behaviour of residents of Estonia was carried out from 5-12 September and there were 1,010 respondents from all across the country.
