The latest data on spending shows it continues to outrun income growth as higher prices absorb more of the household budget. June offered another example: The Personal Consumption Expenditures reading for that month indicated that consumers increased their spending 0.3% from May while personal income,...
A dollar can only stretch so far. For 60 million Labor Economy workers, each trip to the checkout can involve hard choices about what to buy, how to pay and what to leave behind. The July 2026 Wage to Wallet™ Index examines how workers earning no...
Concerns about the price of food and groceries contributed to a decline in consumer confidence in July, according to The Conference Board. The organization’s Consumer Confidence Index decreased by 1.4 points to 90.8 this month, down from an upwardly revised 92.2 in June, according to a Tuesday...
A collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa Direct, “Moving Money at the Speed of Life: Same Payout, Different Experience With Government Disbursements,” examines how U.S. recipients experience government disbursements and why speed is becoming more important. Government disbursement experiences are not the same for every...
Digital wallets are gaining ground not only among consumers who prize speed, but among those using the apps to keep tighter control of strained household budgets. That shift emerges in “The New Checkout: Crimped Consumers Lean Into Online Retail and Digital Wallets,” a PYMNTS Intelligence...
For young subprime consumers, the clearest sign of financial pressure may show up not at the checkout counter, but at the doctor’s office. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Who Is the Subprime Consumer? A Behavioral Profile” found that subprime consumers are not a temporary slice of the...
Consumers are still spending, but many are doing it with less room for error. That’s the central finding from “The Inflation Mirage: What Rising Spending Hides About Consumer Demand,” the latest edition of the PYMNTS Consumer Expectations Index, a PYMNTS Intelligence series based on a June survey of 2,028...
Consumer spending has become less about confidence and more about financial capacity, and that shift is giving banks and payments providers a clearer map of growth opportunities. That is one of the clearest messages from “The Three-Speed Consumer Economy: How Financial Capacity Is Rewriting Spending...
Artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to influence a part of commerce that has traditionally belonged to consumers: choosing how to pay. For years, Pay Later providers competed for attention at checkout through marketing, merchant placement and promotional financing. New PYMNTS Intelligence research with Splitit suggests...