Are shoppers ditching credit cards? New figures from credit card processor Visa show the first ever year-on-year fall in credit card usage in the UK.

The number of Visa-branded cards in use fell by 3.2% over the 12 months to September 30th, while total spending on credit cards fell by 3% to £85.2bn.

In contrast, Visa debit cards are enjoying a surge in popularity, with the number in use now outnumbering credit cards after jumping 21.3% to 47m.

Spending on debit cards was more than double that of on credit, rising over 30% to nearly £188bn.

As money spent on debit cards leaves the customer’s bank account within days at most, rather than attracting interest until it’s repaid, it seems that consumers are starting to heed widespread advice that credit cards are an expensive way to fund day to day spending.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 4:50 pm and is filed under General Credit Card News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.