Shoppers shun cash

WORRIES that paying with cash could help to spread coronavirus have caused British 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% compared with a year earlier.

In the 12 months leading up to March 31, which only covers a small part of the crisis, card payments rose 21%, with ATM transactions down 4.1%.