The love affair that UK consumers have with plastic has been confirmed by a new report that shows credit and debit card spending has trebled over the last ten years. The report from UK payments association Apacs shows that nearly 33% of consumer spending in 2006 was on plastic, the rest being made up of cheques, cash and automated payments.

Transactions on plastic were over £321bn last year, with cash spending at £274bn. Debit cards took the lion’s share of plastic spending with £195bn; credit cards accounted for £126bn.

The last ten years has seen a growth in the popularity of plastic, especially for debit cards, and Apacs expect that spending on plastic to reach 89% of spending in another ten years time. The ease and convenience of using plastic cards, with most retailers taking cards, is of particular attraction to users. More and more professional service providers are beginning to accept plastic too.

Since 1996 use of debit cards has increased by five times, and use of credit cards by three times. In the last year, however, credit card use has actually fallen. Spending with cash has gone up by a mere 17% in the same time, and cheque use has gone by 7%.

The busiest period is inevitably the run up to Christmas, and last year consumers spent a record £31bn on credit and debit cards. In December there were a total of 669m card transactions.

The UK has an increasing debt problem and use of and reliance on plastic card has been blamed for it. In the first quarter of this year nearly 17,000 people were declared bankrupt, representing a 10% increase on the previous year’s figure. In 2006 in England and Wales 100,000 individual insolvencies were lodged.

Additionally court debt judgments for outstanding credit have risen to their highest level for ten years, according to government figures.