Cash

More than 2,500 years after the first use of coins as payment tokens and over 300 years since the first Bank of England banknotes were issued, cash remains the most common payment method. Although the proportion of payments made by cash is in slow decline, in 2009 there were still around 21.2 billion payments made in cash, accounting for two-thirds of all payments by volume. The value of these payments was around £266 billion, representing 23% of all payments made by consumers.

Cash payment volumes are expected to continue to decline slowly and migration to card and automated payments are likely to be important influences. It is projected that cash use will still account for 45% of all payments in ten years' time.

The most popular method of obtaining cash to make purchases is from a cash machine. 71% of the cash acquired in 2008 came from cash machines. Other sources such as wages and benefit payments are reducing in importance.

There are many players in the cash cycle in which notes and coin are transported after having been printed and minted, supplied to businesses and consumers, paid into accounts and processed prior to reissue. These include cash processing centres, secure carrier centres and vehicle fleets, branches of financial institutions, retailer outlets and other service providers such as the vending and transport industries.

Further Topics:

Resilience of the Cash System to a Pandemic

Cash Machines