Odds and Evens: the week's oddest true numbers in financial services, every Friday.
Quiz first. In 2024, which moved more money in the United States: every card payment, credit and debit together, or every check?
The checks, by more than double.
Source: Federal Reserve Payments Study, national estimates for 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024 (July 2026). Data as of 2024.
Show the data
| Figure | What it counts |
|---|---|
| $11.5 trillion | moved by 187.7 billion card payments, credit and debit |
| $24.4 trillion | moved by 9.2 billion checks |
| $2,653 | the average check, against $61 for the average card payment |
About twenty card payments for every check
Consumers, businesses and governments in the US made 187.7 billion card payments in 2024 and wrote 9.2 billion checks, according to the Federal Reserve. That is about twenty card payments for every check. The cards moved $11.5 trillion. The checks moved $24.4 trillion.
The difference is the size of each one. The average card payment was $61. The average check was $2,653, more than forty times as much, and a little more than the average ACH payment, $2,622.
Fewer checks, bigger checks
The number of checks has fallen at every measurement the Fed has made since 2000, from 42.6 billion to 9.2 billion.
Source: Federal Reserve Payments Study, national estimates for 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024 (July 2026). Data as of 2024.
Show the data
| Checks (billions) | |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 42.6 |
| 2003 | 38.6 |
| 2006 | 32.2 |
| 2009 | 25.8 |
| 2012 | 19.7 |
| 2015 | 17.0 |
| 2018 | 13.5 |
| 2021 | 11.0 |
| 2024 | 9.2 |
The average check went the other way, from $1,533 in 2015 to $2,653 in 2024. So the money checks carry has fallen much more slowly than their number: $26.1 trillion in 2015, $24.4 trillion in 2024. Checks were 3.9% of US noncash payments by number in 2024, and 17.5% by value.
And the even bigger number
Neither cards nor checks carry most of the money. ACH does: $104.1 trillion in 2024, 74.3% of the value of all noncash payments.
If you sell payments technology
The count and the value tell two different stories about the same market. A product road map built on how many payments there are points at cards. One built on how much money moves points at ACH, and still, at 17.5%, at the check.
How we counted
Every payment type, every year the Fed published and the share of each are in How Americans pay: card, ACH and check, with the table free to download.