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Shoppers use debit over credit

Consumers are increasingly shunning credit cards in favour of debit ones when making purchases, new figures have revealed.

People were three times as likely to use their debit card for a transaction as they were a credit card during the three months to the end of September, according to The UK Cards Association.

Overall, debit cards were used 1.5 billion times during the period, while credit and charge cards were used five hundred million times.

There was also a year-on-year fall in the number of transactions made using a credit card during the third quarter, with usage dropping by 0.7% compared with the same period of 2008, while debit card usage jumped by 8.5%.

The value of spending on debit cards was double that for credit ones at £65.9 billion, compared with £31.6 billion for credit and charge cards.

New spending on credit cards and the amount of interest charged on debts that had already been accrued was 7.5% lower during the third quarter compared with the previous year, with consumers now repaying 98.1% of new borrowing, up from 96.4% a year earlier.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .