UK mobile wallet adoption reaches 65% as digital payments mature

Mobile wallet adoption continued to accelerate in the UK last year, with almost two-thirds of adults now registered for at least one service as digital payments become increasingly entrenched in everyday spending.

UK mobile wallet adoption reaches 65%

Some 65% of UK adults were registered for a mobile payment service in 2025, up from 57% a year earlier, according to new data from UK Finance. Adoption is significantly higher among younger consumers, reaching 89% among 25 to 34-year-olds compared with 29% of those aged over 65.

The figures underline a gradual change in how consumers interact with cards rather than, so far, a wholesale move away from them.

Card payments Vs Mobile Wallets

Card payments accounted for 64% of the 49.7 billion payments made in the UK during 2025, with debit cards alone representing more than half of all transactions.

UK Finance said 90% of mobile wallet users have a debit card set as their default payment method, demonstrating how services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are increasingly changing the interface through which cards are used rather than replacing the underlying rail.

Contactless payments rose 2% to 19.2 billion transactions, equivalent to 39% of all UK payments. A decade earlier they accounted for just 3%. Mobile contactless is increasingly taking share from physical card contactless as consumers become more comfortable paying through smartphones and other devices.

The more significant longer-term challenge to cards may instead come from account-to-account payments.

A2A Payments

Faster Payments and other remote banking transactions increased 10% to 6.2 billion during 2025, making them the UK’s second most-used payment method behind debit cards. Growth was particularly strong among businesses, while policymakers and the industry are exploring wider use of account-to-account payments at the point of sale.

Cash continued its decline, falling from 4.3 billion to 3.9 billion transactions and representing 8% of payments, compared with 45% a decade earlier. The pace of decline is nevertheless slowing, with about 1.4 million adults still relying mainly on cash for everyday spending.

Adrian Buckle, head of research at UK Finance, said the market was entering a new phase in which many of the digital-payment trends established over the past decade were beginning to mature.

The figures suggest that the next phase may be less about consumers abandoning cards than about the growing competition over what sits above — and eventually alongside — them.