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Mobile payment registration among UK adults jumped from 57% in 2024 to 65% in 2025, according to UK Finance. Cash now accounts for eight per cent of all payments, down from nine per cent in 2024 and 45% in 2015. For anyone selling payment hardware or software into hospitality, the direction is settled: venues that cannot take Apple Pay or Google Pay are turning away a growing share of their customers.
The numbers behind the shift
UK Finance puts total payment volumes at 49.7 billion in 2025, up two per cent year on year. Card payments accounted for 64% of all payments, with debit cards alone making up more than half. Contactless payments, whether by physical card or mobile device, rose two per cent to 19.2 billion, representing 39% of all payments. A decade ago contactless made up just three per cent of transactions.
The age split is stark. Per UK Finance, 89% of 25-34-year-olds are registered for at least one mobile payment service, compared with 29% of over 65s. A third of Brits now use cash once a month or less frequently.
Adrian Buckle, head of research at UK Finance, said: "The trends of the past decade are becoming increasingly established. Cash usage is declining, albeit more gradually, and growth across many payment methods is stabilising as the market matures."
What this means for vendors selling into hospitality
Every venue that still runs a card-only terminal without mobile wallet support is now excluding the payment method most of its under-35 customers expect by default. That is not a consumer preference story anymore. It is a functional requirement, and it creates a direct upsell path for POS and payments providers.
The arithmetic is straightforward. A hospitality group with 20 sites, each processing 400 transactions a day, handles roughly 2.9 million transactions a year. If even five per cent of those customers walk away because a venue cannot take their mobile wallet, that is 146,000 lost transactions. At an average ticket of £12, the annual revenue leak approaches £1.75 million across the group. The cost of upgrading terminals looks trivial against that number.
Faster Payments and other remote banking payments reached 6.2 billion in 2025, up 10% year on year, making them the second most used payment method behind debit cards. Vendors selling into hospitality should read that as a second front: venues are also being asked to accept bank-to-bank transfers for deposits, private events and large group bookings, not just card and wallet payments at the till.
US consumer stress is a separate signal
US credit data is worth separating from UK figures. PYMNTS reports that the average credit card delinquency rate across seven top US banks ticked up from 2.48% in June to 2.50% in July, still below the pre-pandemic average of 2.68%. Net charge-offs declined from 3.42% to 3.28% over the same period.
Synchrony's purchase volume rose 8% year over year, from $46.1 billion to $49.8 billion. Brian Wenzel, chief financial officer at Synchrony, pushed back on the idea that US consumers are cracking: "There's this perception given gas prices and inflation that the consumer is going to bend or come under a lot of duress. Sales accelerated, even though gas prices are up, inflation was up, but [consumers] continue to spend, and they continue to spend in discretionary categories."
For UK-focused vendors, the takeaway is that US consumer stress is not yet showing up as a collapse in discretionary spending. Do not import that anxiety into UK sales planning without UK data to support it. UK transaction volumes are still rising, and UK Finance's own commentary points to stabilisation rather than contraction.
GrubMarket enters the UK through JR Holland
San Francisco-based GrubMarket has bought Team Valley-headquartered JR Holland, a fresh produce wholesaler generating around £35 million in annual revenue, per Bdaily. The deal, announced 18 August 2026, is GrubMarket's first UK acquisition.
JR Holland has supplied fresh produce across the North East for more than 43 years and employs over 120 people. Its customers include restaurants, hospitality venues, foodservice operators, schools and NHS trusts. The business will retain its existing brand and management team.
Mike Xu, chief executive of GrubMarket, said: "Expanding into the UK is an important milestone in our mission to digitise the global food supply chain."
The vendor angle is consolidation risk. GrubMarket is a technology group, and the deal gives JR Holland access to its supply chain software and AI tools. Suppliers selling procurement, inventory or foodservice management software into North East hospitality should expect JR Holland's buying behaviour to shift as those tools roll out. Existing integrations may be displaced, and new ones may open.
Palona AI raises $20 million and widens its restaurant footprint
Palona AI has closed its Series A, bringing total funding to $20 million including converted SAFE notes, per Restaurant Tech News. Investors include Ardenwood Ventures, CrimsonOx, UpHonest, Turbo, Llama Ventures, Neo, Fusion Fund, Defy and Maynard Webb. The company has launched what it calls a multimodal AI operating layer for physical businesses, starting with restaurants. Its product suite covers Revenue Expansion, Revenue Intelligence and Operations Excellence.
Palona is deployed with US operators including Din Tai Fung, Mountain Mike's Pizza, Giordano's, Rooted Hospitality Group and Cali BBQ. A production study across Cali BBQ, Rooted Hospitality and Giordano's recorded 481 orders during 194 location-days and identified 305 large-order and catering inquiries across seven restaurants.
Maria Zhang, founder and CEO of Palona AI, said: "Physical businesses need AI that can understand what is happening and act in real time. Palona turns demand, operational context and live signals into actions that drive revenue, quality and execution."
For UK vendors, Palona is a well-capitalised competitor entering the restaurant operations space with a voice-ordering and demand-capture product. It is not yet a UK story, but its funding and US traction make it one to track. Any vendor selling phone-answering, reservation or catering-enquiry software into UK hospitality should assume Palona will look at this market.
A note on Peach Data
Peach Data provides verified, TPS/CTPS-screened contact data across thousands of UK hospitality venues. When the payment, supply chain and AI stories above create a buying window, accurate merchant records are what let vendors act on it. peachdata.co.uk