Brits will make 120 million payments a day by 2024, as a steep decline in the use of cash is offset by the rise of contactless cards and the Faster Payments service, predicts an industry trade association.
Gazing into its crystal ball, bank-owned Payments UK expects 44 billion payments to be made in 2024, up 3.4 billion over 10 years and representing an average of 679 transactions per adult.
Debit card volume growth will come from increasing contactless card and e-commerce usage. In 2014 debit card payments represented 26% of all transactions but this is projected to rise to 42% by 2024 - equivalent to an average of 282 payments per person. Credit card growth will be more modest, with the number of annual payments per person rising from 41 to 53.
Meanwhile, the number of automated credit payments will soar from an average of 20 a year for UK adults in 2014 to 37 a year. This will be largely driven by Faster Payments, which will see the number of payments it processes rise from 771 million in 2014 to 1.94 billion in 2024.
In contrast, the number of cash payments is set to decline 30% over the next 10 years, from 18.1 billion to 12.6 billion. This would see cash represent around 33% of the total volume of consumer payments, down from 53% in 2014.
Cheque payments are expected to fall even harder, from 2.8% of all non-cash transactions in 2014 to 0.8% in 2024, with 135 million consumer cheque payments and 118 million business cheque payments forecast.