How 93.4% of all retail transactions are now contactless
- New report shows that 80% of 85 to 95 year olds will make contactless payments by 2023
- By 2023, 93% of in-store card payments up to £100 were made contactless
Data shows that more people over 65 are making contactless payments than ever before.
Today, 80 percent of 85 to 95-year-olds pay contactless, according to a new report from Barclaycard.
For the third year in a row, the fastest growth for contactless use was among people over 65.
A record 93.4 percent of all in-store card transactions up to £100 were made using ‘touch and pay’ in 2023, making it the most popular payment method in Britain.
Convenient: 93% of all in-store card purchases up to €100 were made contactless for convenience and convenience
Customers also spend more on average, the report shows.
Last year, average spend per customer was £3,623, up 8.9 percent year-on-year as customers increasingly purchased higher-priced items. The average purchase cost £15.69 – an increase of 3.8 per cent on last year.
When it comes to payments over £100, chip and PIN is the preferred method of payment across all age groups, followed by cash.
Younger customers prefer mobile payments, while a quarter of 18-34 year olds prefer their phones.
Mobile payments have no upper limit for contactless via two-factor authentication.
In contrast, only 3 percent of people over 75 prefer mobile payments to using a physical card.
Some younger shoppers are now choosing not to take their cards with them at all when they leave the house.
More than one in five 18-34 year olds regularly leave their wallet behind while shopping and prefer to pay with their smartphone.
A knock-on effect of the increased use of contactless payments is that almost a fifth of Brits admit they also have difficulty remembering their PIN when asked.
Driving was the category where contactless payments increased the most in 2023, up 28.8 percent since 2022, followed by electronics – where contactless spending growth rose 19.9 percent in 2023 compared to 2022.
| Category | Growth of contactless spending in 2023 versus 2022 |
|---|---|
| Retail | 9.7% |
| Clothing | 6.2% |
| Errand | 10.4% |
| Specialist in food and drinks | 9.3% |
| supermarkets | 10.6% |
| Households | 11.1% |
| Electronics | 19.8% |
| Furniture stores | 11.5% |
| Home improvements and DIY | 9.9% |
| General Retailers | 8.9% |
| General retailers and catalogues | 18.4% |
| Department stores | 9.9% |
| Discount stores | 2.1% |
| Specialty retailers | 8.4% |
| Pharmacy, health and beauty | 9.2% |
| Sports & Outdoors | 7.2% |
| Other specialty stores | 7.8% |
| Catering & Leisure | 11.5% |
| Eat Drink | 10.3% |
| Bars, pubs and clubs | 8.9% |
| Restaurants | -2.9% |
| Takeaways and fast food | 14.9% |
| Other food and drinks | 11.5% |
| Entertainment | 12.1% |
| Hotels, resorts and accommodation | 17.6% |
| trip | 16.3% |
| Public transport | 11.4% |
| Other trips | 19.4% |
| Other | 9.8% |
| Fuel | 14.6% |
| Driving | 28.8% |
| Other services | 21.9% |
| Source: Barclaycard contactless trends report 2024 |
Barclays launched the UK’s first contactless card, the ‘Barclaycard OnePulse’, in September 2007.
At the time, the spending limit per payment was just £10. It was first rolled out across around 22,000 payment terminals across the TfL network and at around 6,000 retailers.
The first retailers to accept contactless were coffee shops and fast food restaurants, including EAT and Pret A Manger.
In 2013, annual contactless transactions reached £1 billion for the first time and the following year saw further expansion when TfL began accepting contactless cards at station barriers, allowing customers to skip queues at ticket machines.
Ten years after launch, in 2017, three in five Brits opted for contactless payments, amounting to a total of £60 billion.
In 2020, 88.6 percent of all eligible payments in Britain were contactless, with adoption boosted by Covid restrictions and the contactless limit increased from £30 to £45.
Karen Johnson, head of retail at Barclays, said: ‘Since we introduced contactless payments in Britain in 2007, it has firmly established itself as the UK’s favorite payment method, thanks to its speed and convenience.
“In 2024, we expect to see a bigger shift to mobile wallet payments as more brick-and-mortar businesses integrate the technology into their customer experience.”