Researchers say the system of paying to park using your mobile phone, follow the trend of using passes instead of cash on buses, could be the latest sign that Britain is moving towards a cashless system.
Brighton and Hove Council has announced it will abandon half of its coin operated parking meters in favor of people using their phones to pay for their car parking. This is already popular on buses across the country where cash is no longer accepted, and particularly in London, as well as in a number of work canteens that operate card-only systems of payment. The popularity of non-cash payments has also been seen on the streets with an unemployed man armed with a card machine so people can give him money using their cards.
The growth in online shopping and the rise of new, innovative ways to pay have led to consumers turning to a growing range of payment options in recent years. About three-quarters of Britons now shop online, compared with just over half in 2008, according to figures released last year.
Contactless payments have also had a significant boost in the last year, with £2.32 billion spent using the method in 2014. This was more than three times the total value of contactless spending the previous year.
Richard Koch, head of policy at the UK Cards Association, said: “It’s the rise in convenient contactless payments for lower sums and smaller transactions online which in particular are changing the way we choose to pay.”
However the Payments Council said the popularity of cashless payments do not mean the end of Britain's monetary system. It predicts that by 2023 we will still be making 12.9 billion transactions using coins and notes. This will be significantly lower than the 27.5 billion transactions without cash that are expected.
Mark Bowerman, a spokesman for the Payments Council, said cash is still a vital payment method for many consumers, with students, people who need to tightly control their budgets, older people and people with a disability being particularly high users of cash.
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