Number of contactless cards across the UK tops 150 million

The number of contactless cards in the UK has topped a milestone of 150 million, according to a banking and finance industry body.

UK Finance’s card spending data for March 2024, released on Tuesday, shows the number of contactless cards in issue has reached 150,172,000.

More than £25bn was spent by people using contactless in March alone.

The figures are part of UK Finance’s spending data on transactions across debit and credit cards.

The latest figures mean that contactless cards now make up 93% of the cards in issue in the UK.

Janine Randolph, head of data management at UK Finance, said: “Contactless cards continue to be a very popular way of consumer spending, whether that’s using a physical card or through a mobile phone.”

Rises in the contactless spending limit over the years and increasing numbers of places that accept contactless payments have made contactless an increasingly convenient option for some shoppers, when they might have previously used coins and banknotes.

Contactless payments accounted for 76% of debit card transactions and 63% of all credit card transactions made during March.

Some 1.59 billion contactless card transactions were recorded by UK Finance in March, 5.9% more than in March 2023.

Within this total, the number of contactless debit card transactions (1.36bn) was 5.3% higher than in March 2023.

The number of contactless credit card transactions, at 225m, was 9.3% higher than in March 2023.

The total value of contactless transactions was £25.1bn in March, a 10.2% increase compared with March 2023.

Total spending across all cards, including contactless, online and chip and pin was £75.8bn – and there was a total of 2.2bn debit and credit card transactions made in the month.