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7 Feb 2025

ACT parent company Bira has warned that retailers across Britain face troubled times ahead despite today's Bank of England interest rate cut to 4.5%, as the Bank halves its growth forecast for...

4 Feb 2025

The ACT and legal partner WorkNest are hosting an exclusive webinar on how to remain compliant with employment law while making necessary business changes.

31 Jan 2025

New independent research has confirmed OEM e-bikes are effectively exempt from risk of battery fires, with unsafe post-purchase replacement batteries, conversion kits, and other equipment that...

31 Jan 2025

The UK Government has decided not to go ahead with proposals to increase the maximum power output of e-Bikes to 500W and to permit throttle assistance following a lengthy consultation process.

23 Jan 2025

ACT parent company Bira is calling for urgent government intervention following disappointing December retail figures, which show sales volumes fell by 0.3% following a modest 0.1% rise in...

22 Jan 2025

Cytech's Australian training provider The Bicycle Academy,  which delivers their courses in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, paid visits to UK Cytech centres late last year...

21 Jan 2025

The ACT is set to deliver a seminar at both the North and South iceBike* events discussing the current challenges and opportunities facing the UK cycle industry.

17 Jan 2025

The ACT has teamed up with employment law, HR, and health and safety experts WorkNest as the association's new legal partner.

10 Jan 2025

The ACT have presented a formal complaint to the BBC, with Director Jonathan Harrison claiming the program was misrepresentative and made "incorrect claims about regulations".

9 Jan 2025

ACT parent company Bira has warned that disappointing footfall figures for December show mounting pressures on independent retailers, with concerning implications for 2025 as business costs...

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Cash use fell again in 2021 as contactless accounts for a third of all payments

Posted on in Business News , Cycles News

In its latest Payment Markets Report, UK Finance has said that the 40.4 billion payments made by consumers and businesses in the UK during 2021 represented a return to pre-pandemic payment volumes after a significant fall in 2020 due to Covid-19 lockdowns.

And, as the economy reopened, payment trends reverted towards their long-running patterns, with card payments increasing and cash payments continuing to decline.

The report shows that:

  • Debit cards were the most used payment method, accounting for 48% of all payments.
  • The number of cash payments fell by 1.7 per cent in 2021, although it remained the second most commonly used payment method, accounting for 15% of all payments in the UK.
  • Faster Payments overtook Bacs Direct Credit as the payment method most frequently used by businesses.
  • 57 per cent of UK adults used mobile banking in 2021.
  • Almost a third of all payments in the UK were made using contactless methods in 2021.

Contactless payments – including payments initiated using contactless cards, mobile phones and watches – continue to grow in popularity. Almost a third of all payments in the UK were made via contactless methods in 2021, up 36% compared with 2020.

Contactless appears to be popular with consumers, due to the speed and security of transactions. The increase in the contactless payment limit (to £45 in April 2020 and then to £100 in October 2021) expanded the range of purchases that could be made this way. Retailers also encouraged the use of contactless during the pandemic as a way of helping to facilitate social distancing in shops. Card acceptance devices have also become more widespread in recent years, especially among smaller businesses.

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