LONDON—Faster payments volume in the U.K. during 2021 climbed by 23% (3.6 billion transactions) over 2020, a new report shows.
The study from the U.K. Finance Payment Markets also shows contactless payments appear to be a particular area of growth, with almost one-third of all payments in the U.K. made via contactless methods in 2021, up 36% from 2020—58% of customer card payments were made by contactless.
While remaining the second-most-popular payment method, accounting for 15% of U.K. payments in the last year, cash payments are down by 1.7%. During 2021 23.1 million consumers used cash only once a month or not at all, which is a significant increase from 13.7 million consumers during 2020. However, 1.1 million consumers still primarily use cash in their day-to-day shopping, Finextra noted in its analysis.
The number of debit card and credit card payments, which declined in 2020, rose again in 2021 (to 22.9 billion payments)—57% of all payments in the U.K. were made using cards. Debit card payments remain the most common, growing by over 23% to 19.5 billion payments, according to the study.