The latest UK Payment Council (UKPC), UK Cash & Cash Machines 2014*, published today confirms that cash continues to play a major role in our society.

Although cash usage levels are down from last year, there has been little change over the past five years with cash remaining as popular as ever amongst consumers. The UKPC believe that part of the reason for this may be that people have been using cash to help them monitor their day-to-day spending – helping them budget effectively during the economic downturn of the past few years.

Cash remains the most commonly used payment method and last year 20 billion cash payments were made, representing 52% of all payments in the UK., which amounted to a total of £260bn.

ATMs most popular source of cash

The ATM remains the most popular method for us to get hold of our cash. On average account holders withdrew £66 per visit. The increase follows continued industry efforts to install ATMs in deprived areas and actively increase the number of free-to-use-ATMs.

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*Figures from the Payments Council comprise of and analyse industry wide statistics and annual market research with a nationally-representative group of consumers. Therefore our statistics may differ from statistics recently published by the British Retail Consortium, who only consider retail spending data provided by its members.