PSFK has a new infographic online that shows the surprisingly decline of cash transactions over the last decade, based on data from “The Way We Pay” report from the Payments Council of the UK.
The number of cash transactions in the last ten years tell their own story. According to the Payments Council statistics, in 1999 three-quarters of all transactions were carried out using cash (73 percent), compared to 59 percent in 2009. The Council suggests that by 2018 less than half of all transactions will be paid by cash.
There appears to be a lot of information in this graphic, although it’s rather difficult to interpret. Each circle is broken into 4 rings that show the number and value of cash and total transactions, but since the emphasis is supposed to be on Cash vs Credit, it seems odd that they interleave them among the rings. Rather than mapping colors to Cash vs Credit, the colors are mapped to Number of Transactions vs Value of Transactions. The outermost green ring is the “Value of Cash Transactions”, so I think you’re supposed to marvel at just how thin that line is.
Click the image above for fullsize.
