UK Card Payments: Market Snapshot (August 2026)

Our Data: What UK Businesses Pay to Take Cards

These are the benchmarks we maintain ourselves, built from the published and typical advertised pricing of the UK providers we track in our card machine rates table, last checked August 2026. They describe what a business pays to accept cards, not the wider market. How we research and maintain them is set out in our editorial standards.

Benchmark	Figure (August 2026)	Notes
Pay-as-you-go flat rate	1.69% - 1.75%	SumUp 1.69%; Zettle, Square and Tyl 1.75%. No monthly fee.
Negotiated acquirer rate	Typically 1.2% - 1.9%	Bespoke, quoted on turnover, card mix and average transaction value.
Monthly fees on acquirer contracts	£10 - £60 typical	Service fees and/or terminal rental; Dojo terminals are bought upfront or hired from £15 a month.
Crossover volume between the two models	Roughly £4,000 - £5,000 a month	Below it, flat-rate readers usually win; above it, a good negotiated quote wins.
Authorisation fee (unbundled acquirer pricing)	3p - 4.5p per transaction	Charged per authorisation on top of the percentage rate. 0p on flat-rate readers.
Early exit fee on fixed-term contracts	£200 - £1,500+	Depends on time remaining. £0 on rolling and pay-as-you-go deals.

The pattern behind the table has held all year: flat-rate readers own the low-volume end because zero fixed costs beat any rate discount when there is little volume to discount, and negotiated acquirer deals win above the crossover because the rate saving outgrows the monthly fee. The arithmetic is worked through at four volumes in our UK fee benchmarks article, and the fees beyond the headline rate are catalogued in hidden card machine fees.

Industry Data: The UK Payments Market in 2024 and 2025

Everything below comes from named public sources: UK Finance (the banking and payments trade body), the British Retail Consortium's annual Payments Survey, and LINK, which runs the UK's main ATM network. Each figure carries its source inline, and the full list with links is at the end of the page. We report these statistics; we do not produce them.

Card spending passed £1 trillion

UK card spending exceeded £1 trillion in 2024: £797 billion on debit cards (down 0.8% year on year) and £249 billion on credit cards (up 5.3%) (UK Finance, 2025).
UK-issued cards were used for 31.4 billion transactions in 2024, a 4% increase on the 30.2 billion in 2023 (UK Finance, 2025).
Since 2019, the number of card transactions has risen 42% while their value has risen 26%: more taps, smaller tickets (UK Finance, 2025).
163.4 million debit and credit cards were in issue at the end of 2024, up from 159.7 million a year earlier (UK Finance, 2025).

Contactless and mobile wallets keep climbing

18.9 billion contactless payments were made in 2024, up 3.4% on 2023, with an average transaction value of £15.86 (UK Finance, 2025).
57% of UK adults were registered for mobile wallets in 2024, up from 42% in 2023, and 50% used mobile contactless payments at least once a month, the first time regular users reached half the adult population (UK Finance, 2025).
UK Finance projects cards will account for around 67% of payments by 2034 (UK Finance, UK Payment Markets 2025).

Cash fell below 10% of payments, but is not gone

Cash was used for 4.4 billion payments in 2024, which is 9% of all UK payments, down from 12% in 2023 and below 10% for the first time (UK Finance, UK Payment Markets 2025).
In shops the picture is different: cash made up 19.2% of retail transactions in 2024 (British Retail Consortium, 2025). The gap with the 9% figure is explained by scope: the UK Finance number counts all payments including bills and transfers, while the BRC counts in-store retail, where cash holds on hardest.
£76.7 billion was withdrawn from LINK ATMs in 2025 across 1.27 billion withdrawals, down 4% by value and 8% by volume on 2024, at an average of £92.11 per withdrawal (LINK, 2026). LINK machines handle 77% of UK ATM transactions.

What retailers paid

British Retail Consortium members paid £1.48 billion in card fees in 2024, a bill that has more than doubled since 2019 (British Retail Consortium, 2025).
Debit cards took 64.0% of retail transactions in 2024, up from 62.0%, while credit cards fell from 14.2% to 12.6% as high interest rates pushed shoppers away from borrowing (British Retail Consortium, 2025).
Total retail transactions fell from 20.9 billion to 20.4 billion in 2024 (British Retail Consortium, 2025).

What This Means for a Business Choosing a Card Machine

Put the two datasets together and the practical reading is straightforward. Card acceptance is no longer optional for most UK businesses: cards dominate transactions and cash is below one payment in ten. Contactless behaviour, 18.9 billion taps at an average of £15.86, means small-ticket businesses feel percentage fees on almost every sale, which is exactly the segment where the difference between a 1.69% flat rate and a poorly negotiated 1.9% plus monthly fees hurts most. And the BRC's £1.48 billion fee bill is a reminder that acceptance costs are a real line item, not a rounding error. If your own effective rate has drifted above our tracked benchmarks, the fix is usually a renegotiation or a switch, both covered in how to reduce card processing fees.

Methodology and Sources

The “Our data” section is built from the published UK provider pricing we track in the rates table and our fee research pages, checked August 2026; the approach is documented in our editorial standards. The “Industry data” section reports third-party statistics exactly as published by the sources below, with the source and year stated inline for every figure. We make no projections of our own.

Sources

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many card payments are made in the UK each year?

UK-issued debit and credit cards were used for 31.4 billion transactions in 2024, up 4% on the 30.2 billion recorded in 2023, with total card spending passing £1 trillion for the first time (UK Finance, 2025). Of those, 18.9 billion were contactless.

What do UK businesses pay to accept card payments?

From our tracked pricing as of August 2026: pay-as-you-go readers charge a flat 1.69%-1.75% per transaction with no monthly fee, while negotiated acquirer pricing typically runs 1.2%-1.9% plus £10-£60 a month. The crossover between the two models sits at roughly £4,000-£5,000 a month in card takings. Separately, the British Retail Consortium reports its members paid £1.48 billion in card fees in 2024.

Is cash still used in the UK?

Yes, but its share keeps falling. Cash made up 9% of all UK payments in 2024, down from 12% in 2023 and below 10% for the first time (UK Finance, UK Payment Markets 2025). In shops it is more resilient: 19.2% of retail transactions were cash in 2024 (British Retail Consortium, 2025). LINK ATM withdrawals totalled £76.7 billion in 2025, down 4% on 2024.

What share of UK payments are contactless or mobile?

There were 18.9 billion contactless card payments in 2024, up 3.4% year on year, with an average transaction value of £15.86 (UK Finance, 2025). In the same year, 57% of UK adults were registered for mobile wallets, up from 42% in 2023, and half the adult population used mobile contactless payments at least once a month.