Worried shoppers shun cash

WORRIES that paying with cash could help to spread coronavirus have caused shoppers to turn to card payments in ever larger numbers.

PayPoint said that card payment transactions were up by more than three quarters in the first 17 days of April, while transactions at cash machines dropped 40 per cent compared with a year earlier.

It accelerates a trend towards plastic payments. In the 12 months leading up to March 31, card payments rose 21 per cent, with ATM transactions down 4.1 per cent.