The swinging sixties

 It's been a week of birthdays. First the humble ATM machine clocked up its 44th year of existence (see previous blog post for more on that). And then Barclaycard announced that 45 years ago it introduced the UK's first credit cards.

My Dad is forever going on about the swinging sixties, greatest decade in the history of mankind (to quote the mighty Withnail and I). And so on...Looking at some of the facts and figures, I'm inclined to believe him. In the year that the credit card arrived, England won the World Cup, The Beatles and The Stones were riding high, the average price of a house was £3,840, petrol cost just 7p a litre and you could go to cinema for 10p - 10p! You need a bank loan to buy a ticket and popcorn these days, all for the privilege of seeing Shia Labeouf and a bunch of robots causing mayhem.

Within a year of the credit card launch, Barclaycard had attracted a million customers. Today the figure is 11.2 million of a total of 31.2 million (UK Cards Association, 2010) credit cardholders in the UK. Last year, two billion transactions were made to the tune of £136 billion. But the credit card's big day was somewhat undermined by figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), suggesting that cautious customers are increasingly turning to cash and debit cards. The proportion of transactions using credit cards fell by 12.9 per cent in a year while those involving debit cards rose by 15.8 per cent. Cash was used for a greater proportion of overall retail spending as the average amount spent in each cash transaction increased by 13 per cent to £12.93.

It seems that pesky old cash won't go away, despite the best efforts of those with power and influence to burn.