Latest figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) shows that the use of cash continues to rise, with a 1.1% growth over 2023, taking the total amount of transactions paid with cash to 19.9%.
Cash remains a vital form of payment for a sizeable minority of the population, particularly for its role in budgeting. This has made it important to many households during the recent cost of living squeeze. All large retailers are committed to accepting cash in their stores, which has a lower processing cost than other forms of payment.
Debit cards remain the most common method of payment, increasing to 62% of transactions (66.7% by spending). Taken together with credit cards, card payments account for over 75% of transactions and 85% of spending.
Meanwhile, card fees paid by retailers continued to grow. The total amount paid by retailers to banks and card schemes rose by over 25% in 2023, at an extra cost of £380 million. This brought the total card fees paid to £1.64 billion. Card companies continue to raise these fees without transparency or justification and retailers hope that the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) will now implement meaningful reforms to tackle the lack of competition and rising costs identified in their current market reviews.
Chris Owen, payments policy advisor at the British Retail Consortium said: “Card fees continue to rise at a substantial rate and the PSR must act upon the harms it has identified in its current market reviews. It must move swiftly to reform the market and implement remedies including price caps on fees and price rebalancing measures.”
Top: Photo by Arjan Billa on Unsplash
