UK Cash Down But Not Out

A survey by UK ATM network LINK found that people under 45 in the UK tend to prefer a digital wallet, while people who are older use physical debit cards. Fewer than half of UK adults carry a physical wallet. Despite that, in 2024 about £1,250 in cash per adult was withdrawn from ATMs and 51% of people said they had used cash in the previous week.

Two thirds of those surveyed have experienced payments disruption caused by outages, prompting Adrian Roberts, LINK Deputy CEO, to say ‘reliance on digital payments can bring great convenience but it can also bring risk. Consumers have told us that they’re not yet confident in the reliability of digital payments, so it is important that we protect cash as a payment system while important work takes place to improve resilience and inclusivity’.