According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) non-card methods, mainly e-payment systems such as PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payments, were used in UK for 150 million transactions, worth £1.2 billion, last year.

These numbers are a tiny fraction of the total 9.4 billion transactions,worth £178 billion, covered by the group's survey, dwarfed by those for cash and credit and debit cards. However, BRC claim that they represent a foothold for the new challengers which will only grow, with emerging payment types such as PayPal set to be accepted by half of all retailers by the end of this year, compared to just a third in 2011.

The BRC argues that this is "very significant" for both retailers and banks because the average cost to a merchant of having a credit or charge card payment processed is 36.2 pence, for a debit card 9.6 pence, but for non-card methods just 7.9 pence. Stephen Robertson, director general, BRC, says: "The message is: customers are choosing to use a payment method that doesn't always involve the banks and is the cheapest non-cash way for retailers to take money. With the market moving away from them, the banks should be making their transaction charging regimes clearer and, above all, cheaper for retailers."

---

 Hang on a minute Stephen: agreed the banks' payment card charges are too high (but will probably be forced down by the rapidly increasing competition), the alternative payment systems, such as PayPal, can be as costly as the bank provided services and in many cases don't offer as much fraud protection. The real message for retailers and corporate treasurers from this research is that consumers are increasingly using the new payment providers because they are more convenient and integrated with the underlying transaction/their way of life. The vital question for corporate treasurers is: Which of the alternative payment systems will they integrate into their collections at the point of sale - which now includes transactions over the counter, in mobile (phones and tablets), over the Internet, and in all sorts of processes, they never knew existed?