The British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) annual Payments Survey found that cash usage fell to just 15 per cent of all transactions that year compared to 30 per cent in 2020.
Some 90 per cent of retail spending, and 82 per cent of transactions, were carried out using either debit or credit card payments, forcing retailers to spend a total of £1.3bn to accept payments from customers in 2021.
The BRC said that the costs associated with accepting these payments have also been rising. Debit card fees increased by an estimated 28 per cent compared to 2020, and total Merchant Service charges increased by 12 per cent. This translated into an additional £141m in costs imposed by card firms onto retailers just to process debit card transactions.
More than four-in-five card transactions were made using debit cards, with the rest made up of credit and charge cards.
As a proportion of total money spent, cash accounted for just 8 per cent of consumer spend (down from...