Debit card payments to overtake cash

 Debit cards are set to overtake cash as the UK’S most frequently used payment method for the first time by 2018, three years earlier than expected.

Britain is going cashless faster because of the rapid growth in the use of contactless cards, according to a payments industry trade association. Figures from Payments UK show that debit cards were used 11.6billion times in 2016, while cash was used for 15.4billion payments.

The association expects 13.4billion debit card payments in 2018 – one in three of them contactless – and only 13.3billion cash payments.