Card Payments Expect To Overtake Cash In 2018 As Top Pay Method

According to data from Guardian from UK Finance, 2016 recorded lowest number of cash withdrawals from cash machines since 2010, with a volume dropping £6 billion from 2015.

Lowest level of growth of cash circulating in the economy has led due to the sharp drop in the use of cash since 1972.

This tendency across the UK is driven by the use of cards for smaller purchases in places like pubs and cafes, with pub chain Wetherspoons reporting 20% drop in cash payments in last 4 years.

“Britain has well and truly embraced a cashless society because of its ease and convenience,” Mark Latham, the director of card machine provider Handepay, told the Guardian.

“When (contactless payment) was first introduced in the UK in 2007, there was a lot of ambivalence, but adoption over the past few years has been rapid because of demand.”

The volume and value of bank notes in circulation is higher than ever before, though swathes of this cash is lying dormant in vaults and ATMs.

The commercial director of Vaultex, which handles roughly a third of the UK’s cash, Mark Trevor added: “While industry figures do show a decline in cash use, the idea that we will all be going cashless has been greatly exaggerated”.