Shoppers go on a contactless spending spree

Use of cards soars to £7bn in a year

CONTACTLESS cards were used in nearly one in eight card purchases last year as customers used them to speed up payments in pubs and on public transport.

In total, £7.75 billion was spent in one billion transactions, the UK Cards Association said. That represented three times the total spent in 2014 and more than doubled the combined amount for the previous seven years.

A higher transaction limit of £30 was introduced for contactless payments last September, making it easier for customers to use their cards for supermarket and high street shopping.

This led to such spending topping £1 billion in a single month in November, rising to £1.2 billion during the Christmas shopping period in December.

There were 140 million contactless transactions in December alone - 52 every second.

Separate data from Barclaycard showed a 532 per cent rise in people using contactless cards on public transport.

This was driven by Transport for London introducing their use across the city’s network and scrapping cash payments on buses. A million journeys a day in the capital are now made using contactless.

There was also an increase of 188 per cent in the payments being used in pubs and bars, while pharmacies recorded a 207 per cent rise and supermarkets 177 per cent.

Tami Hargreaves, of Barclaycard, said the £30 limit increase had ‘provided opportunities for consumers to make contactless payments for larger purchases - such as a full basket of groceries at the supermarket or a round of drinks in the pub’.

The UK Cards Association said about half of all debit and credit cards were now contactless, a total of 79.3million cards.

The cards can be used in most major supermarkets and high street shops, as well as fast food chains, the M6 Toll, London buses and the Post Office, among others.

Shashi Verma, of Transport for London, said more than 350 million journeys had been made using cards from 80 different countries since it introduced contactless on London’s transport network.

‘The popularity of contactless payments on London’s transport network is phenomenal,’ she said.

‘We were the first integrated transport authority to introduce contactless ticketing and, as other world cities look to replicate our successes, we will continue to work to help people benefit from the ease, speed and convenience that contactless payments provide.’

Barclaycard said its customers now made more contactless transactions in a month than in the whole of 2013.

Critics have raised concerns that contactless cards could leave people at risk of fraud, because no signature or PIN is required for payments under £30. But banks said fraud levels were low.

Figures from the card association also showed that £4 in every £5 was now spent on a card and that a quarter of spending was carried out online.

Across all debit and credit cards, consumers spent £53 billion in December alone.

Total annual card spending in 2015 reached £622 billion from 13.4 billion transactions, up from respective figures of £574 billion and 12 billion in 2014.

‘Popularity is phenomenal’