Card spending increases
February 2, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Credit-Cards
New figures show that we spent a record amount of money on our cards over the Christmas period.
The UK payments association Apacs says that plastic card spending reached £31 billion during December, representing 250 transactions per second.
In all, 669 million plastic card transactions were made, signalling a six per cent increase on the same period in 2005 and highlighting how we are becoming increasingly reliant on card payments.
Despite the positive figures, Apacs has revealed that the vast majority of transactions (63 per cent) involved debit cards, while we spent less on our credit cards.
“The trend that we have seen over recent years of cards replacing cash and cheques on the high street continued this Christmas,” said Sandra Quinn from Apacs.
“Our figures show that cardholders are becoming more responsible in the way that they borrow and are clearly focusing on repayments, with the majority of spending being done by debit rather than credit cards.”
Credit card transactions fell from 205 million in December 2005, to 197 million in 2006.
In total, the amount of money spent on credit cards was just £11.4 billion in 2006, down from the £11.5 billion recorded in 2005.
