New East & Partners Europe research* showed that since 2012:

• the acceptance of credit card payments grew its share of merchant payment volumes from 14.6 per cent to 20.3 per cent today.
• debit card payments have remained the most widely accepted form of payment by SME merchants, however it has seen a slight decrease from 61.2% to 57.9% of all payments received as credit’s share has grown.
• online payments:
  • virtually all of this growth in credit card payments has been in acceptance of payment online, growing from 2.7% in 2012 to 8.9% in 2016
  • acceptance of debit card payments online has only grown 0.3% to 1.4%, resulting in credit dwarfing debit in this channel by more than 6 times in size.
• contactless payments:
  • 8.2% of card transactions at the terminal are now contactless transactions, and forecast that this is on a trajectory to grow to 15 per cent by the end of 2017
• decline of cash and cheques continues

Receivables Transaction Behaviour – SME Merchants (Average % of Total Annual Receivables)

Source & Copyright©2016 - East & Partners Europe

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* East & Partner Europe research:

The latest round of the UK Merchant Acquiring Markets Program interviewed 1293 SME card accepting merchants nationally during April, 2016. To ensure that all enterprises interviewed are card accepting merchants, East & Partners executes interviews only with those enterprises which confirm they have card based receivables. The sample is drawn from the natural population of relevant enterprises, structured by turnover, industry and geography based on detailed UK enterprise population demographics.

All merchants are interviewed on a direct basis using a structured Interview Questionnaire. In each case, the interview takes place with the individual holding primary responsibility for decision making over the organisation’s merchant and acquiring relationship.