Cardholders give preference to debit cards

"Over the past 3 years we've seen a pattern emerge: debit cards have increasingly become consumers' first choice over other options, such as cash, cheques and credit cards. And whilst these figures are for last year, surprisingly despite lots of speculation, all the early indications from our figures so far for this year show that there has been no sudden spike in credit card spending. In fact, credit card spending up until the end of May increased by only 1.2% - below the rate of inflation, and the average value of a credit card purchase in a supermarket has actually fallen by £1 to £34.33,” notes Sandra Quinn, director of communications at APACS.

Last year payments to UK merchants, retailers and service providers made with plastic cards amounted £354 billion which corresponds to 31% of total consumer spending in the UK in 2007 while remaining £771 billion were made up of cash, automated payments and cheques.

Payments with debit cards accounted for 4.9 billion transactions and by 2017 it is projected that there will be around nine billion debit card payments. Since 1997 debit card spending increased five times and by 2017 personal spending by debit card is expected to amount £469 billion. In 2007 credit and charge cards were used to make 1.9 billion purchases in the UK to a value of £133 billion.