Today’s consumer has access to more payment instruments than consumers of just a few years ago. As the number of available payment methods increases, so does the need to understand why consumers adopt certain payment instruments, how consumers choose to pay for purchases, which consumers make certain payments, and who is most affected by changes in the payment system.

Previous literature that examined the association between consumer payment behavior and consumer demographic information was based on data from a single time period. This paper contributes to the literature on this topic by reporting, for the first time, demographic trends in consumer adoption and use of several payment instruments over the period of five consecutive years from 2009 to 2013.