Chip and PIN hits 20 year milestone

Today (Tuesday 17th February) marks twenty years since Chip & PIN fully replaced signatures for in-store card purchases. Since then, the way we pay  and the way criminals attempt to commit fraud, has significantly changed.

Alongside more than 25 million additional cards now in circulation compared with two decades ago, two major shifts have transformed how we pay – Contactless payments were introduced in 2007, initially with a limit of £10. Today contactless is the UK consumer’s most popular way to pay, accounting for 66 per cent of all credit card and 76 per cent of all debit card transactions.

Whilst Mobile payments have grown rapidly. Although the first iPhone launched in 2007, widespread adoption of mobile wallets has come more recently. Half of the UK population now uses mobile contactless payments at least once a month

Chip & PIN remains important for higher value transactions and continues to account for 30 per cent of all credit and debit card payments by value. As a result, the average Chip & PIN transaction is £93 compared to £17 for a contactless payment.

One of the key reasons for the introduction of Chip & PIN was to reduce card-present fraud, as well as magnetic stripe cloning or counterfeit card fraud. And it worked. There has been a 95 per cent reduction in losses to counterfeit card fraud over the last 20 years.

However, criminal tactics have changed and there has been a rise in remote purchase fraud, with £215 million stolen in the first half of 2025. Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated social engineering techniques to trick customers into divulging their one-time passcodes, which enables them to authenticate fraudulent online card transactions or fraudulently register digital wallets. We would urge customers to follow the advice of the Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign to help keep themselves safe from scams.

Jana Mackintosh, Managing Director of Payments at UK Finance said “The evolution of payments is remarkable and will continue to be so as the needs of consumers and businesses change. In 2006 the iPhone hadn’t yet been launched, and you couldn’t tap your card to pay for something, whereas today these are the most popular payment methods for UK consumers and many people are happy to only carry their phone rather than a bank card.

“The industry will continue to support and drive innovation and change, like the introduction of Chip & PIN, which gives consumers the confidence to safely buy things in shops and drive growth across the economy.”