The s-l-o-w decline in the use of cash
A couple of decades ago, I assumed that by now we would be moving rapidly to a much less cash, if not actually a cashless, society. But we are still using a lot of cash for a great many payments in spite of debit cards, credit cards, and contactless payment systems.
The number of branches in the UK has halved in the last 30 years. The total fell from 13,349 20 years ago to just under 9,702 in 2013. Some 650 bank branches are due to close this year. Compared to the size of population, the UK has far fewer bank branches than France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Meanwhile the use of bank branches fell by 6% last year as customers channelled more transactions over phone networks and the Internet.
However, the use of ATMs has continued to grow steadily and is now over 70,000. And surprisingly the total cash withdrawals from these ATMs is still rising.
in 2012, 7.2 million consumers relied solely on cash for all regular payments. There is a major difference in the use of cash between consumers on different incomes. For people on incomes of less than £9,000 a year, over 70% of payments are in cash. For those on incomes above £50,000, the figure falls to less than 50%.
It seems that, especially in this age of austerity, low income consumers find it easier to manage their budgets by using cash, so that they can physically see the notes and coins involved in the transactions
These figures emerged from a discussion I chaired recently of the Post Offices Advisory Group run by Citizens Advice where we had a presentation from the LINK Scheme UK.