A majority of transactions in the UK are still made in cash, according to the annual British Retail Consortium (BRC) Payments Survey published this month.
52% of retail transactions are made in cash and that’s declined only a little in the past few years.
But payment by app is on the up, according to the report: “The survey also reveals that UK customers are increasingly embracing non-traditional methods to pay for their shopping. Non card replacement product (payment via app etc.) use has expanded six-fold over the last five years. This method still only represents a small proportion of the payments landscape, but with improvements in technology and constant innovation from retailers and payments providers, these methods of payment will likely increase their prevalence over the coming years.” It will be interesting to see whether Apple Pay dramatically increases that percentage.
Helen Dickinson of the BRC says: “The cost to retailers of accepting debit and credit cards has been increasing for years, so it’s great that European regulations will finally bring some proportionality to these fees and charges. The use of these cards is only going to continue to grow so it’s important that the issues that have persisted in this area are finally being addressed at the EU level. There remains work to be done here in the UK to address these unfair charges, though. Cash remains the cheapest method of payment for retailers to process and, for the moment, it remains the most frequently used method of payment too.
