APACS Provides UK 2008 Payments Update

APACS has released full year 2008 data for payments in the UK . Highlights from the full year’s data include:

• Plastic cards: Total debit and credit card spending was up in 2008 in terms of both value and volume, increasing 6.8% and 7.4% respectively.
• Debit cards dominate card spending - accounting for 73.5% of all plastic card purchase transactions in 2008.
• There were 42.1 million debit cardholders with 75 million debit cards in issue at the end of 2008, compared with 30.1 million credit card holders with 71 million credit cards.
• The number of debit cardholders and cards in issue increased by 1.0% and 4.7% respectively, whereas the number of credit card holders and cards in issue decreased by 2.1% and 2.4% respectively.
• Cheques: During 2008, the number of cheque transactions went down by 10.4%, total values declined by 7.1%.