Ask a UK retailer what the checkout looks like in 2026 and the honest answer is card-led and wallet-wrapped. Cards, used directly or inside a wallet, still sit underneath most online spending, but a growing share goes through Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal rather than being typed in. Open banking is small but climbing steeply, and buy now, pay later has settled at a single-digit share just as it comes under regulation.
The table below puts the latest figures in one place. Shares of online spend come from Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026, which tracks UK e-commerce value in 2025 and forecasts 2030; the volumes come from UK Finance’s UK Payment Markets 2026 report (2025 data, published August 2026) and Open Banking Limited (OBL). As of October 2026, these are the most recent full-year numbers available.
The numbers side by side
| Payment method | Share of UK online spend by value, 2025 | Worldpay forecast, 2030 | Supporting figure (source, data year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital wallets (PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay) | 40% | 50% | 37.6 million consumers registered for a mobile wallet (UK Finance, 2025) |
| Credit cards | 23% | 18% | 5.3 billion credit card payments across all channels (UK Finance, 2025) |
| Debit cards | 22% | 17% | 26.6 billion debit card payments, 54% of all UK payments (UK Finance, 2025) |
| Buy now, pay later | 8% | 9% | 22% of UK adults used BNPL at least once (UK Finance, 2025) |
| Account-to-account, including open banking Pay by Bank | 6% | 5% | 40.16 million open banking payments in the month (OBL, June 2026) |
| Others (prepaid cards, cash-based methods, crypto) | 2% | 2% | – |
Worldpay’s shares may not sum to 100 because of rounding. It sizes UK e-commerce at $371 billion in 2025, rising to $478 billion by 2030, so a shrinking share can still mean more pounds.
Debit cards: the quiet default
Debit is the UK’s workhorse. Almost all adults hold at least one debit card, and UK Finance counted 26.6 billion debit card payments in 2025, up 2%, or 54% of every payment made in the country. Online card spending grew 4% by volume but only 1% by value, as average transaction values continued to edge down.
Worldpay puts debit cards used directly at 22% of online value, slipping to 17% by 2030. The catch is that much of the wallet column is debit underneath: 90% of mobile wallet users have a debit card set as their default, according to UK Finance. Debit is losing visibility at the checkout more than it is losing volume.
Credit cards: a slim lead online, and one sector where they are banned
Credit cards took 23% of UK online value in 2025, a slim lead over debit, and Worldpay expects the share to fall to 18% by 2030. UK Finance recorded 5.3 billion credit card payments across all channels last year, up from 5 billion in 2024.
Regulated online gambling is one corner of e-commerce where the credit card line is zero by law. The Gambling Commission banned gambling with credit cards in Great Britain from 14 April 2020, online and in betting shops, casinos and bingo halls, and expects operators to check that e-wallet deposits were not loaded from a credit card, so debit cards, wallets and open banking carry that sector’s payments. The deposit rules on PayPal slots at Fortune Games, the PayPal page of a UK gambling site, show how that works: the PayPal account has to be in the player’s own name and funded by a debit card or bank account rather than a credit card, and the page points players to deposit limits before they play.
Digital wallets: where the growth is
Worldpay has digital wallets at 40% of UK online value in 2025, heading for 50% by 2030, and calls them the fastest growing method online and in store. PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay are the leading brands online, and UK wallet spending is forecast to rise from £269 billion in 2025 to £453 billion by 2030.
UK Finance’s figures explain the momentum: 37.6 million consumers, 65% of adults, were registered for a mobile wallet in 2025, up from 57% a year earlier, and 58% used mobile payments at least monthly. One caveat: Worldpay counts a card payment made through a wallet as wallet spend, so part of that column is card volume that has moved into an app.
Open banking: small share, steep curve
Account-to-account payments, which include open banking’s Pay by Bank, were 6% of UK online value in 2025. Worldpay’s forecast has the share at 5% in 2030 as wallets grow more quickly, but the volume trend points the other way. OBL counted 40.16 million open banking payments in June 2026, of which 7.73 million were sweeping variable recurring payments, just under a fifth. Monthly payments first passed 40 million in May 2026, and annual volume rose 45% year on year in the twelve months to July 2026. Commercial VRPs, which let a customer pre-authorise variable payments to a business, launched in June 2026 with utilities, government and financial services; general e-commerce is a later phase.
Buy now, pay later: 8% and now regulated
BNPL took 8% of UK online value in 2025, and Worldpay expects only 9% by 2030. UK Finance found that 22% of adults, 12.9 million people, used it at least once in 2025; user numbers did not grow, but 42% used it monthly or more, up from 33%. The FCA has regulated the sector since 15 July 2026, with affordability checks before lending and access to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Britain’s online checkout looks layered rather than replaced. Cards remain the rail under most spending, wallets are increasingly the interface, open banking is building volume from a small base, and BNPL has found its level. Retailers who read the table well will watch where cost and conversion sit across all of them, because these numbers will have moved again by this time next year.
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