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Facts and figures

Summary Figures (2009)

  • 46.4 million adults had a payment or ATM-only card, including 44.3 million with a payment card.
  • 20.2 million credit or charge card holders used their cards regularly at least once a month, down from 20.5 million in 2008.
  • There were 162.6 million cards in issue – 58.1 million credit cards, 6.4 million charge cards, 79.3 million debit cards, 18.5 million ATM-only cards and 0.4 million stand-alone cheque guarantee cards.
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Credit and Charge Card Figures (2009)

  • The number of adults with a credit or charge card decreased to 30.3 million in 2009 from a peak of 31.6 million in 2005. This represented 62% of the adult population.
  • 20.2 million credit or charge card holders used their cards regularly at least once a month, down from 20.5 million in 2008.
  • Each personal cardholder has 2.1 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 card purchase volumes are projected to increase to 3.0 billion by 2019, with spend in that year of £196 billion.
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Debit Card Figures (2009)

  • Debit cards were used to make 5.9 billion purchases in the UK to a value of £264 billion.
  • Debit cards were used 2.5 billion times to acquire £171 billion of cash in the UK.
  • There were 43.1 million debit card holders, accounting for 85% of the adult population.
  • There were 30.8 million regular users of debit cards, each making 188 payments on average during the year in the UK with an average transaction value of £45.
  • More than half of all debit card holders had only one debit card while 3% had four or more.
  • The number of debit card payments is forecast to grow from 5.9 billion to 10.8 billion payments between 2009 and 2019, and spending to increase from £264 billion to £513 billion over the same period.

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Card expenditure statistics (June 2010)

Card Expenditure Statistics report June 2010

Previous reports

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Internet Card Use (2009)

  • 33.9 million adults purchased goods and services over the internet, equating to 67% of the adult population.
  • 608 million card payments were made online with a total spend of £47.2 billion. Of these payments, 48% were made using debit cards and 52% using credit or charge cards.
  • The average value of online debit card and credit or charge card transactions were £72 and £83 respectively.
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Plastic Fraud Figures (2009)

  • Card fraud losses in 2009 totalled £440.3m in 2009. That’s 28% or £170m less than 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 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Card-not-present fraud £183.2m £212.7m £290.5m £328.4m £266.4m
Counterfeit fraud £96.8m £98.6m £144.3m £169.8m £80.9m
Fraud on lost or stolen cards £89.0m £68.5m £56.2m £54.1m £47.9m
Card ID theft £30.5m £31.9m £34.1m £47.4m £38.2m
Mail non-receipt £40.0m £15.4 m £10.2m £10.2m £6.9m
TOTAL £439.4m £427.0m £535.2m £609.9m £440.3m
Contained within this total:
UK retail face-to-face transactions £135.9m £72.1m £73.0m £98.5m £72.1m
UK cash machine fraud £65.8m £62.0m £35.0m £45.7m £36.7m
Domestic/International split of total figure:
UK fraud £356.6m £309.9m £327.6m £379.7m £317.6m
Fraud abroad £82.8m £117.1m £207.6m £230.1m £122.7m
Card fraud losses as a percentage of plastic card turnover amounted to 0.091% in 2009, compared to 0.12% in 2008 – equating to less than 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.Back to top
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