The UK’s Payment Council have just released their annual figures on UK Clearings:

These figures and other figures show that the UK reflects the major global trends in payment habits:

• payment volumes are increasing while the average amount drops (UK: overall average amount/payment dropped by some 4%)
• increasing adoption of contactless payments at the point of sale (UK - Visa contactless payment grew by 40% in 2013)
• cheques and other paper instruments in long-term decline (UK - all paper-based payment are in declining at least -12% per annum)
• automated clearing house payments are increasing (Even UK’s ACH (BACS) has started to grow again as the atonishing growth of Faster Payments has fallen)
• Internet based payments are growing fast (UK: single immediate payments on Faster Payments grew 32%, )
• same-day clearing payments continue to grow (UK: both retail and consumer grew in 2013).

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CTMfile take: Businesses and consumers are steadily moving away from paper payments to electronic payments. The move electronic accelerates if the payment system is easy to use and near-real time, e.g. Faster Payments and contactless card payments.  Is your company ready to end accepting cheque payments and moving to accepting online same day Faster Payments type payments and also contactless card payments at point of sale?