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UK · Business finance · Payments Checked 2 Jun 2026

UK Payments Statistics & Trends 2026

UK consumers and businesses made 48.8 billion payments in 2024, and the latest 2025 figures show Faster Payments crossing 5.5 billion transactions and Open Banking hitting 351 million annual payments. Cards still settle most spend, but the FCA has abolished the £100 contactless cap and the first commercial Variable Recurring Payments went live in Q1 2026.

How to read this page
  • Annual figures use calendar year 2024 (UK Finance Payment Markets Report 2025) as the latest complete UK-Finance baseline; Pay.UK, Bank of England, LINK and Open Banking Ltd have already published 2025 totals, which we use where available.
  • Monthly and quarterly figures use the most recent release; the period is shown on each chart.
  • The Bank of England migrated CHAPS to its new RT2 core settlement engine in April 2025; volume and value series are continuous but the underlying message format moved to enhanced ISO 20022.
By Business Expert research team · Last checked 2 Jun 2026 · How we check the data →
Data period: 2023 – 2026-04·Last reviewed: 2 Jun 2026·Quarterly updates·Sources: Bank of England · LINK · Office for National Statistics · Open Banking Implementation Entity · Pay.UK · UK Finance·⇩ Data (CSV)
1.

Headline figures for 2025

Two lead figures show total scale: volume and value across every UK payment rail. Four supporting figures track the systems and methods where the mix is shifting fastest, with Pay.UK and Bank of England 2025 totals already in.

Lead figures Total UK payment activity, all methods combined.
Total payments made
48.8bn
▲ 1.9%vs 2023
Consumers initiated 84% of these; businesses, government and non-profits the rest. UK Finance Payment Markets Report 2025, covering FY 2024.
UK Finance Payment Markets Report 20252024
CHAPS value settled, 2025
£93.9tn
▲ 7.3%vs 2024
A record year for wholesale settlement, the first full year on the Bank of England’s new RT2 core engine. Average ticket: £1.8m.
Bank of England CHAPS statistics2025
Supporting figures Where the rails are growing and where they aren’t.
Faster Payments value, 2025
£4.84tn
▲ 14.0%vs 2024
Pay.UK Annual Statistics 2025: total value £4.838tn across 5.547bn transactions, up from £4.242tn in 2024.
Pay.UK Annual Statistics 20252025
Faster Payments volume, 2025
5.55bn
▲ 9.0%vs 2024
Single Immediate Payments alone grew 10.8% to 4.738bn. FPS is now the default rail for everyday transfers under £1m and overtook Bacs Direct Credit in business volumes during 2024.
Pay.UK Annual Statistics 20252025
Cash share of payments
9%
▼ 1.6 ptsvs 2023
First year below 10%. Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026 forecasts UK POS cash share dropping to 7% by 2030.
UK Finance Payment Markets Report 20252024
Open Banking payments, 2025
351m
▲ 57%YoY
Roughly 36 million payments per month by January 2026. Commercial Variable Recurring Payments ‘Wave 1’ launched Q1 2026 via the UK Payments Initiative.
Open Banking Ltd Impact ReportJan 2026
2.

Cards now settle six in every ten UK transactions

Two decades of data show the long decline of cash and cheques and the rise of cards. Faster Payments has moved from negligible in 2008 to one in every ten payments today, and during 2024 it overtook Bacs Direct Credit in the business segment for the first time.

Cash has fallen from most UK payments to under one in ten

The clearest signal in two decades of UK Finance data: cash slid from around 58% of all payments in 2009 to 9% in 2024, while debit cards took its place. The full 2024 split by method is in the table alongside. (UK Finance’s full by-method history back to 2004 sits in its paywalled statistical tables.)

Cash as a share of UK payments, 2009-2024
Cash as a share of UK payments, 2009-2024
CategoryCash share of all payments
200958.0%
201448.0%
201828.0%
201923.0%
202214.0%
20249.0%
Source: UK Finance UK Payment Markets, via House of Commons Library · 2009 to 2024 Checked 2 Jun 2026

2024 volumes by method

Annual totals across UK consumer and business payments. 2025 totals will refresh when UK Finance publishes its Payment Markets Report 2026 (expected mid-2026).

MethodVolumeYoY
Debit card23.6bn▲ 4.1%
Credit card5.9bn▲ 2.7%
Faster Payments5.1bn▲ 11.7%
Direct Debit4.7bn▲ 0.4%
Cash4.7bn▼ 12.3%
Direct Credit2.4bn± flat
Other · cheques3.1bn▲ 1.1%
What this means

Cards are now the default way people pay in the UK. Faster Payments is also taking share from older bank-transfer systems, while cash and cheques continue their long decline.

3.

The systems behind UK payments

Pay.UK runs Faster Payments, Bacs and Image Clearing. The Bank of England runs CHAPS for high-value payments. CHAPS alone cleared a record £93.9 trillion in 2025, the first full year on the new RT2 settlement engine.

Faster Payments value has more than doubled in five years

Annual value cleared through Faster Payments, 2019 to 2025. Pay.UK Annual Statistics 2025 shows £4.838 trillion cleared in 2025, up from £4.242 trillion in 2024.

Faster Payments annual value cleared, 2019-2025
Faster Payments annual value cleared, 2019-2025
CategoryFaster Payments value
2019£1.94 trillion
2020£2.10 trillion
2021£2.60 trillion
2022£3.24 trillion
2023£3.74 trillion
2024£4.24 trillion
2025£4.84 trillion
Source: Pay.UK Annual Statistics · 2019 → 2025 Checked 2 Jun 2026

What each system clears, 2025

CHAPS moves the largest value; Faster Payments handles far more everyday volume. Bacs Direct Debit volumes from Pay.UK Annual Statistics 2025.

SystemVolumeValueAvg / txn
CHAPSHigh-value, Bank of England
 53.3m £93.9tn £1.8m
Faster PaymentsReal-time bank transfers, Pay.UK
 5.547bn £4.838tn £872
Bacs Direct DebitRecurring collections
 5.029bn £1.7tn £338
Bacs Direct CreditBulk push payments
 2.4bn £3.9tn £1,625
Image ClearingCheques · Pay.UK
 113m £331bn £2,930
Source: Bank of England · Pay.UK · 2025
A note on CHAPS. The Bank of England migrated CHAPS to its new RT2 core ledger and settlement engine in April 2025, with full ISO 20022 messaging. The headline volume and value series are continuous, but participants are still adopting the enriched ISO 20022 data fields ahead of the November 2027 mandate.
What this means

CHAPS moves the largest value because it is used for wholesale and high-value payments. Faster Payments handles far more everyday transfers, and during 2024 took 50% of all business payment volume, definitively overtaking Bacs Direct Credit in the commercial segment.

4.

Open Banking payments are now mainstream, and commercial VRPs are live

Open Banking is changing how subscriptions, lending and government payments are settled. 351 million payments ran through Open Banking in 2025 (+57% year on year), and the UK Payments Initiative launched commercial Variable Recurring Payments ‘Wave 1’ in Q1 2026 across utilities, regulated finance, government and rail.

Open Banking payments passed 36 million a month

Monthly number of payments started through Open Banking. The step-up through 2025 is partly the sweeping-VRP roll-out (+98% year on year) ahead of commercial VRPs going live in Q1 2026.

UK Open Banking payments per month, 2023-2026
UK Open Banking payments per month, 2023-2026
CategoryOpen Banking payments per month
Jun 20239.70 million
Jan 202414.5 million
Mar 202531.0 million
Jan 202636.0 million
Source: Open Banking Ltd Impact Report · Jun 2023 → Jan 2026 Checked 2 Jun 2026

What people use Open Banking for

Share of Open Banking payment volume by use case, Q1 2026.

  • Account top-ups (savings, ISA)38%
  • Bills & utilities (incl. VRP)21%
  • HMRC / public sector14%
  • Lending (funding & repayment)12%
  • Merchant retail (e-commerce)9%
  • Charity / other6%
Source: Open Banking Ltd · Q1 2026
About this data. Open Banking statistics do not include every account-to-account payment. The figures here show reported Open Banking payments, not the whole pay-by-bank market.
What this means

Pay-by-bank is growing quickly, but it is still small compared with cards. Most Open Banking volume is not yet retail checkout. That’s a 9% slice, and the focus of the next phase of Open Banking development.

5.

How people pay in shops

Contactless is now 76% of debit and 66% of credit card transactions (UK Finance Card Spending Update, February 2026). The FCA abolished the mandatory £100 contactless cap on 19 March 2026, but most major UK banks have voluntarily kept the limit while they upgrade terminal firmware and tighten fraud monitoring.

Contactless settles three in four in-store debit payments

Contactless share of UK debit and credit card transactions. February 2026: 76% debit, 66% credit.

Contactless share of UK card payments, 2014-2024
Contactless share of UK card payments, 2014-2024
CategoryContactless share
20147.0%
201511.0%
201618.0%
201728.0%
201839.0%
201950.0%
202060.0%
202165.0%
202269.0%
202372.0%
202473.0%

Mobile wallets are a fast-growing share of in-store spend

Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay at the point of sale. No UK primary source publishes their exact share of in-store card spend; what is published is that half of UK adults now use a mobile wallet at least monthly (UK Finance), and Worldpay forecasts UK digital-wallet spend to reach £453bn by 2030.

Chart pending sourced data. No UK primary source publishes the mobile-wallet share of in-store card spend as a series; UK Finance reports wallet-user penetration on a different basis.

Source: UK Finance Card Spending Update · 2018 → Feb 2026 Checked 2 Jun 2026
About the £100 contactless cap. The FCA removed the mandatory £100 single-tap limit on 19 March 2026, but Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Santander and Monzo have all opted to keep the £100 cap in place while terminal firmware and real-time fraud detection are upgraded. The FCA itself estimated that uncapping without safeguards could lift contactless fraud by up to 131%.
What this means

Contactless is saturated; the next growth leg is digital wallets. Apple Pay and Google Pay already bypass the £100 limit through biometric Strong Customer Authentication, and Worldpay’s 2026 forecast has UK digital-wallet spend growing 68% by 2030 even though most wallet transactions are still card-funded underneath.

6.

Cash is shrinking, but a fifth of adults still rely on it

The ATM network has shrunk as cash use has fallen. The FCA’s Access to Cash rules now require firms to keep reasonable cash access in place; LINK monitors how well this is working.

UK ATM count has fallen 38% since 2017

Total free-to-use and pay-to-use ATMs at end of each calendar year. LINK’s 2025 data shows withdrawals down 8.3% to 1.27 billion and total value down 4.2% to £76.7bn, but the average withdrawal has climbed to £92.11 as customers visit less often and take more out per trip.

UK ATM count, 2017-2025
UK ATM count, 2017-2025
CategoryTotal ATMs
201768,610
201863,160
201960,662
202054,574
202153,398
202250,300
202347,711
202444,569
202542,403
Source: LINK · 2017 → 2025 Checked 2 Jun 2026

Who still relies on cash

Adults who say cash is their main payment method.

All UK adults
19%
UK Finance 2024 baseline
Aged 65+
31%
+12 pts vs all adults
Income <£15k
28%
+9 pts vs all adults
Rural England
24%
+5 pts vs all adults
Source: UK Finance Payment Markets Report 2025 · 2024 survey base
What this means

Cash use is still falling, but the rate of decline is slowing as it concentrates on the people who depend on it most. The FCA confirmed in December 2025 that it will start a formal review of the Access to Cash regime in Q4 2026, with findings due in Q2 2027. 121 shared banking hubs and 93 cash deposit services have opened since the rules took effect in September 2024.

More UK payments statistics

Focused datasets in this series, each tracing its figures to named primary sources.

7.

Sources and methodology

Every figure on this page maps to a named primary source: UK Finance, Pay.UK, the Bank of England, ONS, LINK and Open Banking Ltd. Vendor surveys and aggregator datasets are excluded.

12 figures Figures used on this page ▾
FigureSourcePeriod coveredLast checkedStatus
Total payments · volumeUK Finance Payment Markets Report 202520242 Jun 2026Checked
Faster Payments · annual valuePay.UK Annual Statistics 20252019 → 20252 Jun 2026Checked
Faster Payments · annual volumePay.UK Annual Statistics 202520252 Jun 2026Checked
Bacs Direct Debit volumePay.UK Annual Statistics 202520252 Jun 2026Checked
CHAPS volume & valueBank of England CHAPS statistics20252 Jun 2026Checked
Cash share of transactionsUK Finance Payment Markets Report 20252004 → 20242 Jun 2026Checked
ATM volume & valueLINK20252 Jun 2026Checked
Contactless shareUK Finance Card Spending Update2018 → Feb 20262 Jun 2026Checked
Mobile wallet shareUK Finance / Worldpay GPR 20262020 → 20252 Jun 2026Checked
Open Banking · annual volumeOpen Banking Ltd Impact Report2022 → 20252 Jun 2026Checked
Open Banking · retail shareOpen Banking Ltd Impact ReportQ1 20262 Jun 2026Partial coverage
Commercial VRP rolloutUK Payments Initiative (UKPI)Q1 2026 launch2 Jun 2026Checked
£100 contactless capFCA policy statement19 March 20262 Jun 2026Checked
RT2 CHAPS migrationBank of EnglandApril 20252 Jun 2026Checked
How we check the data ▾

Primary publishers only

All headline numbers come directly from the publisher: UK Finance, Pay.UK, the Bank of England, ONS, LINK and Open Banking Ltd. We do not use aggregator or third-party datasets for headline figures.

Refresh cadence

Annual figures refresh each summer with the UK Finance Payment Markets Report. Faster Payments figures refresh quarterly, Open Banking monthly, and Bank of England figures on release.

What counts as a primary source

A regulator, central bank or named industry body. Where we calculate something ourselves (YoY changes, five-year trends) we label it as a calculated figure.

Known limits

UK Finance covers most but not every smaller card issuer. Open Banking statistics report scheme-recorded payments only and do not capture every pay-by-bank payment. The Bank of England migrated CHAPS to its new RT2 settlement engine in April 2025; volume and value series remain continuous, but enhanced ISO 20022 data fields are still being adopted by participants ahead of the November 2027 mandate.

Data integrity

Every figure on this page maps to a named primary publisher (UK Finance, Pay.UK, Bank of England, LINK, Open Banking Ltd, FCA, ONS) or, where stated, the Worldpay Global Payments Report 2026 as a corroborating industry source. The Open Banking retail-share line is the only entry with partial coverage and is flagged inline. See the Methodology page for the full set of rules. Last full review: 2 Jun 2026.

UK payments FAQ

Common questions about UK payment volumes and trends

How many payments are made in the UK each year?
UK consumers and businesses made 48.8 billion payments in 2024. Cards account for roughly 60% of those, with debit cards alone at 19.4 billion transactions.
What is the most used payment method in the UK?
Debit cards. They processed approximately 19.4 billion transactions in 2023, and contactless now accounts for 73% of all card payments. See our contactless payment statistics for the full trend.
Are cash payments still used in the UK?
Yes, but the share has fallen sharply. Cash settled around 12% of all payments in 2023, down from 45% in 2014. About 5.1 billion cash payments were made in 2023.
How fast are Faster Payments growing?
Faster Payments reached 5.5 billion transactions in 2025, up from 1.7 billion in 2017, roughly 3.4x growth in eight years. Volume has grown every single year in that period.
What is the difference between Bacs, Faster Payments and CHAPS?
Bacs handles bulk direct debits and credits with 2-3 day settlement (~5.9bn transactions). Faster Payments is near-real-time account-to-account transfer (5.5bn transactions in 2025). CHAPS is same-day high-value settlement (under 0.3bn transactions but over 90% of sterling value).