There were 246 million transactions on cardholders’ credit cards in February 2019, 4.6% more than in February 2018 with a total value of £14.6 billion, 1.3% higher than in the same period a year earlier.
There were 1.5 billion transactions on cardholders’ debit cards in February 2019, 9.7% more than in February 2018. This equates to a total value of £49.9bn 0.9% higher than in the same period a year earlier.
There were 1.6 billion debit and credit card transactions in February 2019, 10.7% more than a year ago. This equates to a total value of £60.1bn, 2.3% up on February 2018.
Nearly one-third of all card transactions were made using contactless cards. There were 644 million contactless card transactions in February 2019, up by 20.6% year-on-year. The total value of contactless transactions was £5.9bn in February 2019, a year-on-year increase of 19.8%.
There are now around 82 million of the debit cards which are contactless enabled with 61 million credit cards in issue of which 43 million are contactless-enabled. In total, there are 51 million credit card accounts of which 34 million are active.