Customer spending with UK Visa credit, debit, commercial and prepaid cards has increased by 9.2% to £445bn last year, according to Visa Europe’s annual results for the year to 30 September 2013.

According to the study, UK consumers’ preference for electronic payments has continued to increase in 2013 with an increase of 9.3% on spending by UK cardholders with Visa debit on the previous year.

However, debit payments contribute over 80% of Visa Europe’s business in the UK with more than £1 in every £3 spent in the UK spending using Visa.

Additionally, spending on commercial cards has increased by 18.1%, while on prepaid cards by 42.8%.

The results revealed that in 2013 £110bn was spent at UK merchants, which equates to £3,488 being spent every second with a Visa card. It accounts to an increase of 18% on the previous year at UK merchants.

Visa Europe CEO, Nicolas Huss, said: "We will scale-up our next generation payment solutions to move in pace with the rapid adoption of new technologies and, more particularly, the growth of mobile and digital commerce. And we will work more flexibly to meet the needs of our customers and partners across Europe.

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"As a membership organisation focused on European solutions for the best interests of all parties in our four-party model, our continued success is good for the European economy because electronic payments fuel commerce, replace inefficient and expensive cash and fight the shadow economy."

The study results also showed that contactless transactions have increased four fold in the year to September 2013, with £461.6m spent with Visa contactless cards up from £96.7m in the previous year.

There are 500m Visa cards in Europe and the total expenditure on Visa cards reached €2trn, while point-of sale spend increased by 8.5% in 2013.