More than half of UK adults now use mobile wallets, according to a report from UK Finance. Recent figures from the Fintech and financial services industry trade body reveal how consumer behavior and payment habits in the UK continue to evolve and how they are now expected to change in the next 10 years.
Findings from the Payment Markets Report for 2024 indicate:
- Over half of UK adults (57 per cent) are now using mobile wallets
- Debit, credit and charge card payments (both physical and mobile) accounted for 64 per cent of all UK transactions
- Debit cards were the most used payment method with 26.1 billion payments made
- There were 18.9 billion contactless debit and credit card payments made – around 61 per cent of all card payments
- Faster Payments became the second most-used payment method, with 75 per cent of adults using mobile banking
- Buy Now Pay Later saw a notable jump, with use rising from 14 per cent to 25 per cent of UK adults in just one year
- Cash payments accounted for less than 10 per cent of all payments for the first time
The total number of payments made in the UK last year was “48.6 billion payments, up by 1.5 per cent from 2023.”
More people are now using digital payments, with rising use of in-app purchases, digital wallets, and Buy Now Pay Later for shopping.
But cash payments have fallen.
These trends show how people are increasingly turning to digital payment options, a shift that is “expected to continue in the years ahead.”
Consumers were responsible for “84 per cent of all payments last year, mostly for day-to-day purchases.”
Business organizations, government agenccies and not-for-profit entities based in the United Kingdom have now accounted for 16 per cent. This reportedly includes salary, pension and benefit payments made to individuals and payments between organisations.
More consumers are now said to be using their phones, watches or other mobile devices to manage finances and complete various purchases.
There’s been a rise in mobile wallet use for online and contactless payments, with more than half of UK adults (57 per cent) using wallets in the past year, which is up considerably from 42 per cent in 2023.
Users who register for a mobile wallet service, seem to become frequent users and where contactless card payments replaced what were once low-value cash payments, now contactless mobile payments “appear to be replacing contactless payments initiated using a physical card.”
Of those who used mobile payments, half or 50% reportedly used them on a monthly basis, and 44 per cent did it weekly or more even more often than that.
Although younger consumers still lead the way in terms of adoption – “88 per cent of 16–24-year-olds – among those aged 65 and over, registration rose from 14 per cent in 2023 to 25 per cent in 2024. ”
Mobile banking, carried out through a banking app for example, became the most common way to access accounts in 2024, used by “75 per cent of UK adults. It also overtook desktop banking for the first time.”
Brits now use mobile banking not just to check on their account balances, but to make payments and manage their finances.
As a result, Faster Payments – the system which is now behind most real-time bank transfers – increased by about 14 per cent to 5.6 billion transactions this past year, making it the United Kingdom’s second most widely-used payment method after simple payment cards.