Consumers are increasingly using cash to make payments in store in order to keep track of their spending, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said on 8 June.
“Customers are more likely to be paying with cash”, said Tom Ironside, Director Business and Regulation at the BRC. “They have less money. They are buying things only as and when they need them, and spending less each time.”
The use of cash in 2011 was up by 5.7% compared to 2010. The BRC based its figures on 9.5 billion transactions in British shops. Tom Ironside: “In 2010 financial worries were putting people off running-up debt and they turned away from cards. Now times are even tougher.”
The figures come only weeks after the Court of Justice of the European Union, on 24 May, rejected a legal challenge by MasterCard that the European Commission’s decision to classify cross-border transaction fees as uncompetitive. The fees are charged by a cardholder's bank to a merchant's bank for each card transaction. MasterCard had agreed to lower its charges in 2009 but the EU Commission believed Mastercard had not gone far enough.
Michiel Willems © 2012 CP Publishing Ltd. Picture: News.bbc.co.uk
