- Summary figures (2008)
- Credit and charge card figures (2008)
- Debit card figures (2008)
- Card expenditure statistics (monthly)
- Internet card use (2008)
- Plastic fraud figures (2008)
Summary Figures (2008)
- 46.7 million adults, or 94% of the adult population, held either a debit, credit or ATM-only card issued by a bank or building society.
- 38.6 million adults used their card regularly at least once a month to make purchases in the UK.
- There were 168.7 million cards in issue - 66.1 million credit cards, 6.4 million charge cards, 76.3 million debit cards, 19.4 million ATM-only cards and 0.4 million cheque guarantee cards.
Credit and Charge Card Figures (2008)
- The number of adults with a credit or charge card declined to 30.2 million in 2008 from a peak of 31.6 million in 2005. This stands at 62% of the adult population.
- 20.5 million credit or charge cardholders used their card regularly to make purchases, at least once a month, up from 19.7 million in 2007.
- Each personal cardholder has 2.3 credit or charge cards.
- Credit and charge cards were used to make 2.0 billion purchases in the UK to a value of £139.0 billion.
- Credit and charge cards were used 45 million times to acquire £5.9 billion of cash in the UK.
- Credit and charge card purchase volumes are projected to increase to 2.8 billion in 2018, with spend in that year of £216 billion.
Debit Card Figures (2008)
- There were 42.1 million debit cardholders, or 85% of the adult population.
- There were 31.1 million regular users of debit cards each making 171 payments on average.
- 64% of debit cardholders had only one debit card, while 9% had three or more.
- Debit cards were used to make 5.4 billion purchases in the UK to a value of £241 billion.
- Debit cards were used 2.4 billion times to acquire £163 billion of cash in the UK.
- The number of debit card payments is forecast to grow from 5.4 billion to 9.4 billion payments between 2008 and 2018, and spending to increase from £241 billion to £432 billion over the same period.
Card expenditure statistics (January 2010)
Card Expenditure Statistics report January 2010
Internet Card Use (2008)
- 32.5 million adults purchased goods and services over the internet, equating to 65% of the population.
- 538 million card payments were made online with spend of £41.2 billion. Of these payments, 48% were made using debit cards and 52% using credit or charge cards.
- The average values of online debit card and credit or charge card
transactions were £74 and £79 respectively.
Plastic Fraud Figures (2008)
- Card fraud losses in 2008 totalled £609.9m in 2008.
- The two main areas of fraud were on transactions not protected by chip and PIN: specifically internet, phone and mail order fraud; and fraud abroad - committed by criminals using stolen UK card details in countries yet to upgrade to chip and PIN - which has nearly doubled in two years.
- The introduction of chip and PIN means that lost and stolen card fraud is now at its lowest level since the collation of industry fraud losses began in 1991.
A full breakdown of plastic fraud figures is given below.
|
Card Fraud Type – on UK issued credit and debit cards |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
|
Card-not-present fraud |
£150.8m |
£183.2m |
£212.7m |
£290.5m |
£328.4m |
|
Counterfeit fraud |
£129.7m |
£96.8m |
£98.6m |
£144.3m |
£169.8m |
|
Fraud on lost or stolen cards |
£114. 4m |
£89.0m |
£68.5m |
£56.2m |
£54.1m |
|
Card ID theft |
£36.9m |
£30.5m |
£31.9m |
£34.1m |
£47.4m |
|
Mail non-receipt |
£72.9m |
£40.0m |
£15.4 m |
£10.2m |
£10.2m |
|
TOTAL |
£504.8m |
£439.4m |
£427.0m |
£535.2m |
£609.9m |
|
Contained within this total: |
|||||
|
UK retail face-to-face transactions |
£218.8m |
£135.9m |
£72.1m |
£73.0m |
£98.5m |
|
UK cash machine fraud |
£74.6m |
£65.8m |
£62.0m |
£35.0m |
£45.7m |
|
Domestic/International split of total figure: |
|||||
|
UK fraud |
£412.3m |
£356.6m |
£309.9m |
£327.6m |
£379.7m |
|
Fraud abroad |
£92.5m |
£82.8m |
£117.1m |
£207.6m |
£230.1m |
Card fraud losses as a percentage of plastic card turnover amounted to 0.12% in 2008 – equating to around a tenth of a penny lost to fraud in every £1 spent on cards – less than the 0.14% figure in 2004. This reflects the positive effect of chip and PIN as well as the fact that we continue to use our cards more and more each year.
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