One in four consumers globally expect to switch to making cashless payments only within the next two years (25%), while one in two say it will happen in the next 10 years (53%) and 16% say they already solely make digital payments, a survey of consumers and merchants in nine markets worldwide has found.

The sixth edition of The Visa Global Back to Business Study also found that 41% of small businesses anticipate being able to rely exclusively on digital payments within the next two years, with nearly two thirds saying it could happen within 10 years (64%) and 18% saying they are already cashless.

Just under one in four of the small businesses surveyed say they plan to accept payments made using digital currencies including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (24%) and nearly three quarters regard accepting new forms of payment as “fundamental to their business growth” (73%).

“The failure to offer digital payment is frequently a dealbreaker — 41% of consumers surveyed said they have abandoned a purchase in a physical store because digital payments were not accepted, and younger shoppers are even more likely to do so,” Visa says.

“Gen Z (59%) and Millennials (55%) have not bought something because there was no way to pay digitally, significantly more than Gen X (38%) and Boomers (19%).”

Participants in the survey included 2,250 small businesses in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Russia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and the USA, 1,000 adult consumers in the US and 500 adult consumers in each of the other eight countries. It was conducted by Wakefield Research for Visa in December 2021.

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