The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | August 19th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Premium subscribers only

The Big Story

Published this week, the new Finance Payment Markets report by UK Finance has found that in the UK Faster Payments volumes increased by 23% to 3.6 billion from 2020 to 2021. Contactless payments appear to be the fastest-growing area, with almost one third of all payments in the country made via contactless methods in 2021, up 36% from 2020. About 58% of customer card payments were made by contactless, as a consequence of both the pandemic and the increase in contactless limit to £100.

Cash payments are down (1.7%) but they remain the second-most popular form of payment in the UK and about 1.1 million consumers still primarily use cash in their day-to-day shopping. The report’s predictions expect that by 2031, cash usage will only account for 6% of all payments made in the UK.

Be on the lookout for

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned UK firms against promoting unapproved BNPL products. Unauthorised firms face criminal charges if they do not have an FCA approval for their BNPL promotions. Authorised firms must also ensure that all promotional advertising comply with the FCA guidelines, unless an exemption applies. The move signals a first push towards stricter scrutiny for the BNPL industry.

Events & Appointments

• After joining the European event, we are now partnering up with Money 20/20 USA. The in-person cnference will take place at Las Vegas from 23rd to 26th October. Join FinTech’s biggest conversation where you can build new networks and harness the power of FinTech’s biggest hive mind using IBSi’s code IBS250 for a discount. “