It is the first time that digital banking payments outnumbered direct debit payments, which stood at 34.9 million.
The report also shows that there were €49m worth of contactless payments per day in the second quarter of the year, the highest daily spend in any quarter since the current series of records began.
Some 57.3% of card payment volumes were contactless in the second quarter of the year while 39.2% of the value of payments at physical points of sale were contactless.
“The value of contactless payments rose by 40% to more than €4.5 billion,” said Gillian Byrne, Head of Payments at BPFI.
“Cheque payments meanwhile fell by 2.6% year on year to 4.8 million, about half the volume when compared to the same period in 2018,” she said.