Visa's Debit Card Usage Spikes

SAN FRANCISCO (TheStreet) -- Consumers continued to tighten their belts in the summer months, spending less overall, according to Visa (V Quote) but the company did see a spike in the use of debit cards, a trend that kept its overall transaction numbers on the rise.

The electronic payments network disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday that U.S.-based total payments volume --the dollar amount put on Visa-branded credit and debit cards -- fell 1% in August from the year-earlier period. The performance represented a slight improvement from July, when payments volume fell 2% from last year.

The latest numbers showed consumers were increasingly reluctant to increase their debt load as credit card volume fell 10% in August. Conversely, payments on debit cards surged 7% on a year-over-year basis for the month. Those figures continued trends seen in July when credit card volume declined 9% while debit card payments rose 4 percent.

Cross border payments volume, or the use of cards across countries, fell 7% vs. the prior year period, on a constant dollar basis, Visa said. In the July month, cross border payments volume fell 6%.

The company has been relying heavily on processed transactions - or rather the number of times a card is swiped to be used via its network. During August, processed transactions rose 9% from levels in the year-ago equivalent period. This increase follows a jump of 8% in the number of processed transactions in July. When the company issued its third-quarter results on July 29, it reported total processed transactions of 10.3 billion for the three months ended June 30, an 8% increase over the prior year's third quarter.