· Plastic cards: Total debit and credit card spending was up in 2008 in terms of both value and volume, increasing 6.8% and 7.4% respectively.
· Debit cards dominate card spending - accounting for 73.5% of all plastic card purchase transactions in 2008.
· There were 42.1 million debit cardholders with 75 million debit cards in issue at the end of 2008, compared with 30.1 million credit card holders with 71 million credit cards.
· The number of debit cardholders and cards in issue increased by 1.0% and 4.7% respectively, whereas the number of credit card holders and cards in issue decreased by 2.1% and 2.4% respectively.
· Cheques: During 2008, the number of cheque transactions went down by 10.4%, total values declined by 7.1%.
· Automated transactions: In 2008, CHAPS sterling payments decreased in terms of volume by 2.8%, but increased by value by 6.2%.
· Since beginning operation in May 2008, 82.8 million payments have been processed through the immediate faster payment service, reaching a value of £32.9 billion.
Cash machine withdrawals: The number of cash machine withdrawals during 2008 increased slightly, up from 2.8 billion in 2007 to 3.0 billion in 2008.
The quarterly statistical release provides a comprehensive overview on all UK payments data including expenditure on plastic cards, repayments and lending on credit cards, cash machine withdrawals, cheques, Faster Payments, CHAPS payments, Direct Debits and Bacs Direct Credits.