New data shows UK card payments remain dominant, with debit growth, digital wallet reliance, and limited open banking adoption shaping issuer strategies.
Evidence of card resilience
The data confirms the card market’s strength:
- High Volume and Growth: Card transactions reached almost 30 billion in 2024, increasing at 7.35% per year over five years.
- Debit Dominance: Debit card payments are growing significantly faster than credit (8.1% vs. 3.9%), indicating strong consumer preference.
- New Product Lines: The market is adapting with multi-currency cards (e.g., Revolut, Wise) and “flex” products that combine debit and credit functionality, appealing to modern consumers.
- Digital Wallet Foundation: Approximately one-third of all online digital wallet transactions are executed using underlying cards.
- Open Banking Scale: Open Banking transactions account for a very small fraction of the total market (0.01% in 2024), demonstrating that cards retain overwhelming transaction volume.
Implications for issuers
These trends emphasise the need for issuers to prioritise continuous innovation in the card sector, particularly with debit products. The competitive landscape is intensifying, with non-bank entities projected to process a significant share of transactions by 2030.
Worldline helps banks and fintechs navigate this market by offering an end-to-end card value chain solution, encompassing:
- Comprehensive issuing services (debit, credit, virtual, and commercial cards).
- Advanced fraud and security features (tokenisation, 3DS, SCA compliance).
- A unified platform to manage processing, compliance, and value-added services like instalment payments.
By leveraging Worldline’s scale and expertise, issuers can effectively innovate and secure their position in the robust UK card market.
Read the full article: https://www.paymentscardsandmobile.com/cards-still-vital-to-the-modern-uk-payments-market/
