A Look at Payments in the UK - The Way We Pay 2010

A new report, ‘The Way We Pay 2010‘, published by the UK Payments Council "shows a payments revolution occurred in the noughties, and this looks set to continue over the next decade. The last decade not only saw the rise of internet banking and shopping but it was also the decade where cards took control of our wallets as cheques and cash were increasingly replaced by a card – particularly the debit card."

Card usage has flourished as traditional payment means have withered. But credit card usage has actually fallen in real terms since 2005. Debit cards have become the payments workhorses. We have increased how much we spend on cards fourfold in ten years and will use them six billion times this year. Increasingly debit cards have taken over both higher value credit card payments, and lower value cash payments. By 2018, one in four of all transactions will be on a debit card, up from just one in twenty ten years ago.