A third of adults now use their mobile phones or smartwatches to make payments — a sign of how the pandemic has transformed the way shoppers spend their money, new figures show. The number of people registered to use their devices for contactless transactions has risen by more than 7 million in the space of 12 months. SponsoredThe analysis of spending methods during 2020 by UK Finance, the banking industry representative body, highlighted how such transactions have been encouraged for hygiene reasons — and how the death of cash has been accelerated. More than 17 million people have signed up to watch and phone payment schemes GETTY IMAGESThe report showed that the number of people using systems such as Apple Pay and Google Pay through smartwatches and phones went up notably last year, with 7.4 million more people registering to

Source: The Times June 16, 2021 10:52 UTC