In 2024, for the first time on record, cash accounted for less than 10 percent of all payments made in the United Kingdom. The milestone comes from the "UK Payment Markets 2025" report published by UK Finance, the banking industry body, which also recorded mobile banking overtaking desktop banking and mobile wallets reaching a majority of households.
A symbolic threshold crossed
Cash transactions fell to about 4.4 billion, down from 6 billion the year before: 9 percent of the total, less than half of the 23 percent recorded in 2019 and about a fifth of the 48 percent share of 2014. Until 2023 cash was the second most used payment method in the country; in 2024 it slipped below direct debit, Faster Payments and credit cards.
The trend is expected to continue: UK Finance forecasts that by 2034 cash will account for around 4 percent of all payments, while contactless payments alone will rise to 43 percent of the total.
Cards account for 64 percent of transactions
Physical and mobile cards remain the dominant method, making up 64 percent of all transactions. In 2024 Britons made 18.9 billion contactless payments, about 39 percent of the total: they were 3 percent in 2015 and 21 percent in 2019. Some 62 percent of debit card payments and 55 percent of credit card payments were contactless.
Payments go digital, from card to phone
57 percent of UK adults were registered for at least one mobile wallet service, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, up from 42 percent in 2023; half of the adult population used mobile contactless payments at least once a month for the first time. Adoption is highest among younger users (88 percent of 16-24 year olds) but is growing among the over-65s too, with registrations up 14 percent in a year.
Mobile banking, accessing an account through an app, overtook desktop banking for the first time and is now used by 75 percent of adults. Instant transfers on the Faster Payments network grew 14 percent to about 5.6 billion transactions in a year, making it the second most used payment method after cards.
Who still relies on cash
Despite the decline, cash is far from disappearing. About 1.2 million people in the UK still rely mainly on cash for their day-to-day spending, down from 1.5 million in 2023, while 16.9 million adults use it at most once a month. One adult in three now lives a "largely cashless" life.
Talk of the "end of cash" remains premature: for more than a million people banknotes are still an essential tool, and the pace of the digital transition varies across generations and income groups.
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