ALEXANDRIA, VA – Since COVID-19 hit, the need for cash has steadily declined over the past few years with new research revealing that the US could be heading in the direction of making physical cash obsolete.
READ: Cashless Businesses Have Fans and Critics, Even in Alexandria, Virginia
According to studies1, the number of Americans who use Apple Pay is expected to grow by 9 million by 2026 with further investigative research claiming the US will also be the world’s largest market when it comes to the overall volume of such transactions by 2027 with services like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay being at the heart of this development.
Considering this, research has revealed which states are most likely to turn cashless first by analyzing payment app search volumes in proportion to the population of each state.
Ranking the US states most prepared and likely to become cashless:
|
Rank |
State |
Total Score |
|
1 |
Texas |
7.808 |
|
2 |
Alabama |
7.142 |
|
3 |
Florida |
7.105 |
|
4 |
Virginia |
6.807 |
|
5 |
Nevada |
6.695 |
|
6 |
Maryland |
6.640 |
|
7 |
South Carolina |
6.604 |
|
8 |
Mississippi |
6.600 |
|
9 |
Delaware |
6.528 |
|
10 |
Louisiana |
6.521 |
|
11 |
North Carolina |
6.456 |
|
12 |
New York |
6.432 |
|
13 |
Georgia |
6.408 |
|
14 |
Kansas |
6.373 |
|
15 |
California |
6.299 |
|
16 |
Missouri |
6.241 |
|
17 |
Arkansas |
6.075 |
|
18 |
Washington |
5.892 |
|
19 |
Oregon |
5.866 |
|
20 |
Colorado |
5.764 |
|
21 |
Massachusetts |
5.749 |
|
22 |
Oklahoma |
5.740 |
|
23 |
Illinois |
5.652 |
|
24 |
New Jersey |
5.608 |
|
25 |
Tennessee |
5.581 |
|
26 |
Arizona |
5.576 |
|
27 |
Kentucky |
5.553 |
|
28 |
Pennsylvania |
5.389 |
|
29 |
Ohio |
5.293 |
|
30 |
Connecticut |
5.150 |
|
31 |
North Dakota |
5.092 |
|
32 |
Rhode Island |
5.028 |
|
33 |
Minnesota |
4.964 |
|
34 |
Utah |
4.878 |
|
35 |
Indiana |
4.855 |
|
36 |
New Hampshire |
4.787 |
|
37 |
West Virginia |
4.762 |
|
38 |
Wyoming |
4.748 |
|
39 |
Hawaii |
4.736 |
|
40 |
Vermont |
4.724 |
|
41 |
Maine |
4.660 |
|
42 |
New Mexico |
4.558 |
|
43 |
Idaho |
4.528 |
|
44 |
Nebraska |
4.370 |
|
45 |
Iowa |
4.331 |
|
46 |
Wisconsin |
4.298 |
|
47 |
Alaska |
4.193 |
|
48 |
South Dakota |
3.779 |
|
49 |
Montana |
3.641 |
|
50 |
Michigan |
0.780 |
However, across the 50 states, not all seem to be on board with the idea of going cashless.
In fact, Michigan was ranked as the least likely state to kick cash to the curb with an index score of just 0.78. Montana, South Dakota, Alaska, and Wisconsin were all among the bottom five in the study.
Looking at the most popular payment apps across all states, PayPal takes the top spot followed by Cash App, Venmo, Afterpay and Klarna.
1*The searches per month per payment method for each US state were taken from Google Keyword Planner extracted and analyzed across the date range August 2022 – August 2023.
The payment methods analyzed were as follows: Afterpay, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Cash app, Google Pay, Klarna, Mastercard click, Meta pay, PayPal, Samsung Pay, Skrill, Venmo, and Visa checkout.
