The relative importance of cash as a consumer payment instrument has gone down, according to the latest Reserve Bank of Australia research.Based on a survey of 1167 respondents, who each kept a diary of payments over seven days last November, consumers made an average of 13 payments a week. A little under half (47 per cent) of those payments were made with cash. In 2010, when the RBA last conducted the survey, 62 per cent of payments were made with cash and in 2007 cash made up 69 per cent of consumer payment.The value of cash payments has also fallen - down from 38 per cent in 2007 to 29 per cent in 2010 and 18 per cent in the latest survey.The proportion of debit and credit card payments increased over the same period, while use of Bpay was little changed and use of cheques fell substantially.Credit and debit cards together now account for 43 per cent of the number of consumer payments and 53 per cent of the value.PayPal enjoyed strong growth, although it was off a very low base. Its share of the number of payments grew from one per cent in 2010 to three per cent in the latest survey, and its share of the value of payments increased from one per cent to two per cent.The RBA's head of payments, Tony Richards, said the survey showed that the decline in the use of cash was across all types of merchants.Speaking at RFi's Savings and Deposits conference in Sydney yesterday, Richards said one surprising finding was that holdings of cash had not declined much.While the value of cash payments per week was an average of A$183 (from $259 in 2010), the average amount of cash in respondents' wallets increased from $93 to $112."Consumers use it as a store of value and hold it for times when other payment instruments are not available," he said.In terms of the value of payments, cash was used in 80 per cent of cases where the payment was $10 or less. For payments of $50 or more cash was used on only 20 per cent of occasions.The proportion of remote payments has grown strongly. In 2007 remote payments accounted for six per cent of the number of consumer payments and 21 per cent of the value. By 2010 remote payments made up nine per cent of the number and 29 per cent of the value, and in the latest survey they were 14 per cent of the number and 45 per cent of the value of consumer payments.Ninety per cent of those remote payments were made over the internet (smartphones accounted for five per cent of that number), eight per cent were made over the telephone and two per cent were made by mail.Richards said the figures suggested that smartphones had not yet emerged as a widely used payment instrument.