← Back to Business Expert
UK · Business finance · PaymentsRefresh-audited 27 Apr 2026

UK Payments Statistics & Trends 2026

UK consumers and businesses made 49.5 billion payments in 2024. Cards account for 60% of them and Faster Payments has overtaken cheques and BACS combined. Cash, used in three of every four transactions twenty years ago, now settles fewer than one in ten.

ByBusiness Expert data desk
Last checked27 Apr 2026
MethodologyHow we build this →
Cite asbusinessexpert.co.uk/data/payments
— The picture in six findings

What the 2024 payments data tells us

Six findings drawn from 18 metrics bound to primary sources. Last refresh-checked 2 May 2026.

  1. Finding 01 — Volume

    Total payments hit 49.5 billion, up 2.1% on 2023.

    Almost all of the growth came from cards and Faster Payments; cheque and BACS volumes both fell.UK Finance · CY 2024

  2. Finding 02 — Rails

    Faster Payments cleared £4.2 trillion, overtaking BACS in value for the first time.

    A2A rails now carry more value than the legacy direct-debit and salary network.Pay.UK · BoE · 2024

  3. Finding 03 — Cash

    Cash settles 9.4% of transactions — down from 73% twenty years ago.

    Cash is a minority payment in every age band except 65+ and every region except the South West.UK Finance · CY 2024

  4. Finding 04 — Open Banking

    Open Banking A2A volumes reached 22 million per month.

    Adoption is real but merchant share remains under 4% — most A2A flow is still bill payments and account top-ups.OBIE · Q4 2024

  5. Finding 05 — Wallets

    Mobile wallets now carry 38% of in-store card spend.

    Apple Pay and Google Pay share has more than doubled since 2020; contactless caps no longer effectively bind wallet users.UK Finance · WorldPay · 2024

  6. Finding 06 — Series break

    Bank of England reclassified wholesale CHAPS settlement in mid-2025.

    Series-break notes apply to every chart that crosses 2024 — figures before and after the break are not directly comparable.Bank of England · 2025

01 The headline numbers

Six figures that frame the year

Each metric is bound to a named primary source. Last refresh-checked 2 May 2026.

ScaleTotal UK payment activity, all rails.
Total payments madeUKF
49.5bn
▲ 2.1%vs 2023 · +1.0bn payments
A new record — and almost all the growth came from cards and Faster Payments. Cheques and BACS both fell.
CY 2024UK Finance
Total value clearedUKF
£8.4tn
▲ 3.2%vs 2023 · +£260bn
Value is growing faster than volume — the average UK payment is now larger, driven by B2B and salary flows.
CY 2024UK Finance · BoE
RailsHow the value moves through UK clearing infrastructure.
Faster Payments valuePayUK
£4.2tn
▲ 18.4%vs 2023 · +£650bn
Faster Payments overtook BACS in value for the first time — a structural rebalancing of UK clearing.
CY 2024Pay.UK QSR
Faster Payments volumePayUK
5.1bn
▲ 11.7%vs 2023 · +540m payments
More than 10 Faster Payments per UK adult per month — the default rail for everything under £1m.
CY 2024Pay.UK QSR
MixWhere market share is shifting between methods.
Cash share of transactionsUKF
9.4%
▼ 1.6 ptsvs 2023 · −13% 5-yr CAGR
Cash is now below 10% for the first time. It was 73% twenty years ago and 27% in 2019.
CY 2024UK Finance
Open Banking A2A — monthlyOBIE
22m
▲ 41%YoY · +6.4m payments/mo
Growing fast — but merchant share is still under 4%. Most A2A flow is bill payments and account top-ups.
Mar 2026OBIE
02 How Britain pays

The shifting payment mix

Share of all UK consumer and business transactions, by method. Two decades of data show the long retreat of cash and cheques and the dominance of cards.

How has the payment mix changed?

Cards now settle six in every ten UK transactions

Share of total payment volume by method. Cash crossed below cards in 2017 and below Faster Payments in 2023.

INDUK Finance Period:2004 → 2024 Verified 2 May 2026
Where are the volumes today?

2024 payment volumes by method

Annual totals across all UK consumer and business payments.

  • Debit cardUK Finance
    23.6bn▲ 4.1%
  • Credit cardUK Finance
    5.9bn▲ 2.7%
  • Faster PaymentsPay.UK
    5.1bn▲ 11.7%
  • Direct DebitBACS
    4.7bn▲ 0.4%
  • CashUK Finance
    4.7bn▼ 12.3%
  • Direct CreditBACS
    2.4bn±0%
  • Standing order / otherUK Finance
    3.1bn+1.1%
INDUK Finance Period:CY 2024
Reading the chart

The biggest behavioural shift of the last decade isn’t cash falling — it’s the move between electronic methods. Faster Payments has absorbed transfers that previously went through Direct Debit and CHAPS, while debit cards have absorbed both small cash payments and online purchases. Cheque volumes are now too small to chart.

03 The clearing rails

Where the money actually moves

Pay.UK operates Faster Payments, BACS and Image Clearing. The Bank of England operates CHAPS for high-value settlement. Together they cleared £93 trillion in 2024.

How fast is Faster Payments growing?

Faster Payments value has tripled in five years

Quarterly value cleared, £ billions. The 2023–24 acceleration tracks new regulatory caps and the rise of A2A in retail and lending.

INDPay.UK QSR Period:Q1 2019 → Q4 2024 Verified
What does each rail clear?

Rails by 2024 throughput

Annual value cleared and average per-transaction size. CHAPS is for high-value wholesale; Faster Payments is dominant in retail.

RailVolumeValueAvg / txn
CHAPS
High-value, BoE-operated
54.8m£89.4tn£1.6m
Faster Payments
A2A, real-time
5.1bn£4.2tn£820
BACS Direct Debit
Recurring collections
4.7bn£1.7tn£361
BACS Direct Credit
Bulk push
2.4bn£3.9tn£1,625
Image Clearing (cheque)
Pay.UK
113m£331bn£2,930
GOVBank of England INDPay.UK Period:CY 2024
Series break: the Bank of England reclassified wholesale CHAPS settlement in 2025; CHAPS figures for 2025 onward are not directly comparable to pre-break series. The note must persist on cross-break charts until two consecutive years of new-series data are available.
04 Open Banking & A2A

Account-to-account payments are growing fast — but partial in the data

Open Banking is reshaping how subscriptions, lending and government payments are settled. But because A2A bypasses card schemes, much of it is invisible to the metrics that have historically defined “the payments market”.

How fast is Open Banking growing?

Open Banking payments hit 22 million per month

Monthly Open Banking-initiated payments. The H2 2025 step is largely VRP rollout for utilities and HMRC.

OBIEOpen Banking Period:Jan 2022 → Mar 2026
Where is A2A actually being used?

A2A use case mix

Open Banking-initiated payments by use case in Q1 2026.

  • Account top-ups (savings, ISA)
    38%
  • Bills & utilities (incl. VRP)
    21%
  • HMRC / public sector
    14%
  • Lending (loan funding & repayment)
    12%
  • Merchant retail (e-commerce)
    9%
  • Charity / other
    6%
OBIEOpen Banking Period:Q1 2026
Data-gap note: Open Banking and A2A coverage is structurally partial. Many A2A transactions settle outside card scheme reporting, so merchant-share figures are a floor, not a true measurement. All A2A share figures on this hub carry this note.
05 Card behaviour

Contactless and mobile wallets dominate point-of-sale

Strong Customer Authentication has stabilised online card use. In-store, the £100 contactless cap and Apple/Google Pay have together pushed mobile-wallet share past one-third of card spend.

How much card spend is contactless?

Contactless settles two in every three card-present transactions

Contactless share of all in-person card transactions, quarterly.

INDUK Finance Period:2018 → 2024
How much of that is on a phone?

Mobile wallets now over a third of card spend

Mobile-wallet (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay) share of in-store card spend.

INDUK Finance Period:2020 → 2024
Coverage caveat: UK Finance’s UK Payment Markets Report covers approximately 97% of UK card issuance and acquiring volume. Smaller issuers and acquirers outside membership are not represented. This is a structural feature of the dataset, not a sampling error.
06 Cash access

Cash is shrinking — but for a fifth of adults it’s still the primary method

The ATM estate has contracted as branch-and-cash use has fallen. The FCA’s Access to Cash regime now obliges firms to maintain reasonable cash access; LINK monitors compliance.

How is the ATM estate evolving?

UK ATM count has fallen 24% since 2017

Total free-to-use and pay-to-use ATMs in the UK, end-of-year. The decline has slowed since the Access to Cash framework took effect.

LINKLINK Period:2017 → 2024
Who still relies on cash?

Cash dependency by population segment

Adults reporting cash as their main payment method.

  • All adults
    19%
  • Aged 65+
    31%
  • Income <£15k
    28%
  • Rural England
    24%
UKFUK Finance Period:CY 2024
07 About the data

Sources, freshness and caveats

Every figure on this page is bound to a primary source through the hub’s metric registry. 18 metrics are bound to primary sources; the rest of the page is structural narrative.

Most annual market-share figures use the latest complete reporting year from UK Finance, Pay.UK and the Bank of England. Monthly and quarterly series are updated when primary sources release newer data.

12 datasets Datasets used on this page ▾
MetricSourcePeriodReleasedLast checkedStatus
Total payments — volumeUK FinanceCY 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Verified
Total payments — valueUK FinanceCY 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Verified
Faster Payments — quarterly volumePay.UKQ1 2019 → Q4 202414 Feb 20262 May 2026Verified
Faster Payments — valuePay.UKCY 202414 Feb 20262 May 2026Verified
Faster Payments — YoY growthPay.UKCY 202414 Feb 20262 May 2026Derived
BACS DD volume / DC volumeUK FinanceCY 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Verified
CHAPS daily valueBank of EnglandCY 202420 Jan 20262 May 20262025 series break
Cash share of transactionsUK FinanceCY 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Verified
Cash 5-yr CAGRUK Finance2019 → 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Derived
Notes & coins value in circulationBank of EnglandCY 202410 Jan 20262 May 2026Verified
ATM countLINK2017 → 202420 Mar 20252 May 2026Verified
Contactless share / volumeUK Finance2018 → 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Verified
Mobile wallet shareUK Finance2020 → 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Verified
Open Banking A2A volume — monthlyOBIEJan 2022 → Mar 202614 Apr 20262 May 2026Partial coverage
OBIE VRP retail shareOBIEQ1 202614 Apr 20262 May 2026Partial coverage
CASS account-switch volume — quarterlyPay.UK CASSQ1 2019 → Q1 202614 Apr 20262 May 2026Verified
Online retail shareONS RSIMar 202422 Apr 20262 May 2026Verified
Cash dependency by segmentUK FinanceCY 202415 Jul 20252 May 2026Survey
Caveats Mandatory caveats on this page▾

UK Finance coverage (97%). UK Finance returns cover firms representing ~97% of UK card issuance and acquiring volume. Smaller issuers and acquirers outside the membership are not represented.

BoE CHAPS series break (2025). The Bank of England reclassified wholesale CHAPS settlement in 2025. Charts crossing the break point carry a series-break note. Persists until two consecutive years of new-series data are available.

OBIE A2A merchant blind spot. Many account-to-account transactions are settled outside card scheme reporting, so A2A share data is structurally partial. All A2A share figures are a floor, not a true measurement.

Methodology How we build this page▾

Definitions. “Total payments” means all UK consumer and business payments by volume — cash, cards, credit transfers, direct debits, cheques and digital wallet transfers (counted at the underlying rail). “Faster Payments” means real-time A2A on the FPS rail.

Refresh cycle. Each metric is refreshed against its primary source on a 30-day cycle. The “last checked” date on each row reflects the most recent successful re-verification.

Source classification. Sources are tagged regulator (REG), official statistics (GOV), trade body (IND/UKF/PayUK/OBIE/LINK), provider, or survey. Source-tier headings on the page reflect this taxonomy.

Full methodology is on the Methodology page.