We are only just into June and already it has been a huge year for UK cards. Douglas Blakey comments
Rarely a week goes by without more positive news. Smart public transport ticketing – more on than later – is one mega area for growth.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Meantime, debit and credit card spending continues to show double digit growth.
According to Payments UK, debit cards will overtake cash as the UK’s most frequently-used payment method by 2021.
The association forecasts that debit cards will be used for 21 billion payments in the UK, worth £856bn, by 2025. In 2015, 45% of all UK payments were still made by cash. This is estimated to fall to just 27% by 2021.
This coincided with news from the UK Cards Association that Britons spent £660bn on debit and credit card purchases in 2015, an increase of 10% compared to £602.3bn in 2014.
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By GlobalDataThe same report noted that card spending online soared by 20% to £210bn from £175bn; by the end of the year, half of all online spending took place via tablets and smartphones, up from 37% in 2014.
The association forecasted that debit cards will be used for 21 billion payments in the UK, worth £856bn, by 2025.
In other card sectors, as reported in this issue, the gift card industry is booming, boosted by the shift from physical to digital gifting.
Currently the UK has less than a 5% digital share in the gift card industry but it is growing at a rate of plus-200% year-on-year.
C2C: Not so smart
Public transport smartcards is the sector where growth is going through the roof. The UK’s five biggest bus operators have announced they will bring contactless travel to every bus in the UK by 2022, with many areas benefiting sooner.
The rail sector has agreed a new round of funding and a new framework to explore how contactless payments could be introduced for rail season tickets or long-distance train travel, so passengers no longer have to print out tickets.
An early adopter of smartcard travel is National Express subsidiary C2C. It runs rail services from London to Essex.
In theory, the smartcard initiative is great. When it works.
Writing as a user, there is a flaw. If a paper season ticket fails to function, any ticket office can issue a replacement. In 15 years of commuting into London, I cannot recall an issue with a paper season ticket.
Not so, the less than smart C2C season ticket Smartcard. When it suddenly fails to function, ticket barriers fail to open.
Cue the attention of Stasi-like outsourced security personnel, not employed by C2C but engaged by an outsourced outfit.
They have not a clue if your season ticket smartcard is loaded with a ticket or not -their initial assumption is that the barrier does not open because the unfortunate traveller has not loaded the smartcard.
Nor can the ticket office staff help. Incredibly, they have no access to the online system to check if a smartcard is loaded or not.
Fast forward two phone calls and three emails and C2C advise by telephone: sorry, our system has failed, it is unacceptable, we are looking into how your ticket issued on 9 June 2016 shows on the system as being valid to 3 June 2016…so the card will not work because the system thinks your ticket expired on 3 June.
Admittedly the writer’s smart card failure could be a one-off. The pained expression on the part of ticket office staff as they handed out a complaint form and uttered expletives regarding customer complaints about smartcards, suggests otherwise.
