[sherman]

I am interested in the extent that people use debit/credit cards as their primary method of payment for day-to-day spending.

What brought this on was that I was at my local McDonalds this evening. While I was there their eftpos went down. For some reason it looks like they were cut off from the network.
It was intriguing to see how many people had to turn around and walk out the door because they had no other way of paying for a meal.
I felt that this highlighted just how much New Zealander's as a nation seems to rely on our eftpos network. A lot of people (myself included) hardly ever carry cash these days, unless we have a specific reason for it. The most I might carry usually is a few dollars in coins to pay for street parking.
In fact, we think nothing of whipping out our bank card to pay for purchases as little as $1.

I've been to the US enough to know that people are more likely to carry cash there, but I don't know how prevalent using debit cards is for day-to-day purchases is in other countries.


Note1: In NZ, the eftpos network is a nation-wide payment system. When you open a normal cheque or savings account (depending on your bank) you are issued with a card that can be used in ATM's and for eftpos transactions. Security is by way of a PIN number.
Finding a retailer without an eftpos terminal is almost impossible these days. Even the questionable takeout store on the street corner will have one...

Note2: Here, eftpos has become a brand name, and is written in lowercase. Of course those who know their acronyms will have probably guessed that it comes from EFTPOS, which stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale.