Chart of the week: tap and pay takes off
Contactless card transactions have rocketed. In the first half of 2017 we spent £23bn by contactless, almost as much as the £25bn for the whole of 2015.
It's easy and convenient to tap and pay. No wonder, then, that contactless card transactions have rocketed in recent years 470 million transactions took place in June alone, notes Hugo Greenhalgh on FT.com.
In the first half of 2017 we spent £23bn in this way, almost as much as the £25bn for the whole of 2015. There are now 111 million contactless cards in issue, compared with 250,000 in 2007, when only 2% of them were used to tap and pay. Last year overall card payments (chip-and-pin and contactless) overtook cash for the first time. A third of card transactions were contactless.
Viewpoint
"Brexiteers are deeply sceptical ofstate action [yet] confronted with the most difficult administrative problem the British state has ever been lumbered with, [they] become optimistic to the point of cavalier about the capacity of the state... these newdirigistessuddenly regard the government as entirely capable of replacing four decades of European economic, social and environmental regulation without difficulty Such is their uncharacteristic faith in the benign hand of Whitehall that, through the Repeal Bill process, they are even prepared to put all power in the hands of ministers and bureaucrats to make regulations by edict."
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Philip Collins, Prospect
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Ben studied modern languages at London University's Queen Mary College. After dabbling unhappily in local government finance for a while, he went to work for The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh. The launch of the paper's website, scotsman.com, in the early years of the dotcom craze, saw Ben move online to manage the Business and Motors channels before becoming deputy editor with responsibility for all aspects of online production for The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Edinburgh Evening News websites, along with the papers' Edinburgh Festivals website.
Ben joined MoneyWeek as website editor in 2008, just as the Great Financial Crisis was brewing. He has written extensively for the website and magazine, with a particular emphasis on alternative finance and fintech, including blockchain and bitcoin.
As an early adopter of bitcoin, Ben bought when the price was under $200, but went on to spend it all on foolish fripperies.
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