
3 ways to spend smarter at Christmas
Millions of us will be spending carefully this Christmas, and putting our spending on credit cards. Here’s how to spend smarter.
Read more…As of March 2023, over 100 million debit cards were issued in the UK, and 92.5 million of these were contactless. This has stayed largely the same since March 2022, when there were 100,656,000 debit cards in circulation, compared to 100,424,000 in circulation in March 2023.
Month | Issued debit cards in the UK |
---|---|
March 2022 | 100,656,000 |
April 2022 | 101,641,000 |
May 2022 | 101,959,000 |
June 2022 | 100,201,000 |
July 2022 | 100,188,000 |
Aug 2022 | 100,967,000 |
Sep 2022 | 101,345,000 |
Oct 2022 | 101,169,000 |
Nov 2022 | 100,755,000 |
Dec 2022 | 100,891,000 |
Jan 2023 | 100,747,000 |
Feb 2023 | 100,313,000 |
March 2023 | 100,424,000 |
Month | Contactless debit cards |
---|---|
March 2022 | 91,213,000 |
April 2022 | 92,426,000 |
May 2022 | 92,174,000 |
June 2022 | 91,015,000 |
July 2022 | 91,347,000 |
August 2022 | 92,204,000 |
September 2022 | 92,721,000 |
October 2022 | 92,848,000 |
November 2022 | 92,586,000 |
December 2022 | 92,586,000 |
January 2023 | 92,695,000 |
February 2023 | 92,517,000 |
March 2023 | 92,488,000 |
According to external research, the average person has 1.95 debit cards. There is no limit on the number of debit cards you can have, but some people find 1 is sufficient, whereas others may have 2 or 3 that they use for slightly different purposes.
In March 2023, there were an average of 65.3 million transactions made daily in the UK. There were over 2 billion transactions on debit cards in the UK throughout the month, up by 6.5% compared to the 1.9 billion transactions made in March 2022.
Month | Volume of purchases on debit cards in the UK (mns) | Volume of purchases on debit cards outside the UK (mns) |
---|---|---|
March 2022 | 1900 | 119 |
April 2022 | 1841 | 121 |
May 2022 | 1991 | 124 |
June 2022 | 1894 | 121 |
July 2022 | 1973 | 128 |
Aug 2022 | 2008 | 133 |
Sep 2022 | 1887 | 118 |
Oct 2022 | 2069 | 120 |
Nov 2022 | 2038 | 116 |
Dec 2022 | 2100 | 124 |
Jan 2023 | 1842 | 115 |
Feb 2023 | 1800 | 109 |
March 2023 | 2024 | 122 |
The average debit card spend per transaction for March 2023 is £33.30. In comparison, the average transaction value for March 2022 was £32.87, meaning there was only a 1.3% increase.
The majority of debit card transactions are made in the UK, and the value of transactions over the past year peaked in March 2023, with £67.4 billion being spent.
The lowest amount spent on debit cards in the UK over the past year was in February 2023, with a total value of £57.7 billion spent. This means that, in just 1 month, there was a 16.8% increase in total debit card spend in the UK.
The total spending from March 2022 to March 2023 equals £807.3 billion, which means that the average monthly spending from March 2022 to March 2023 is £62.1 billion.
As expected, the value of purchases made on UK debit cards outside the UK is significantly less than those made within the UK. Take the fact that only a little over £3.3 billion was spent out of the UK in March 2023 – this is less than 5% of the total value being spent in the UK.
The value of purchases made outside the UK varies seasonally due to people travelling abroad more in the summer months. In the colder months, like January 2023, there was a value of only just £3 billion spent. On the other hand, August 2022 had the highest spending, with a value of £3.8 billion, which is 16.3% higher than the amount spent in January.
Month | Value of purchases on debit cards in the UK (mns) | Value of purchases on debit cards outside the UK (mns) |
---|---|---|
March 2022 | 62457 | 3285 |
April 2022 | 61284 | 3387 |
May 2022 | 62485 | 3516 |
June 2022 | 58787 | 3429 |
July 2022 | 61338 | 3587 |
Aug 2022 | 61618 | 3770 |
Sep 2022 | 58755 | 3327 |
Oct 2022 | 63794 | 3535 |
Nov 2022 | 63828 | 3264 |
Dec 2022 | 65938 | 3394 |
Jan 2023 | 61988 | 3155 |
Feb 2023 | 57670 | 2960 |
March 2023 | 67405 | 3257 |
Millions of us will be spending carefully this Christmas, and putting our spending on credit cards. Here’s how to spend smarter.
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