The Future of Digital Wallets in the UK

Wallets Are Already the Norm

If you already pay with your phone, you’re firmly in the majority. Around 37.6 million UK adults, roughly 65%, were registered to use a mobile wallet in 2025, up from 57% the year before. What’s notable is where the growth is now coming from: not just younger users, but steadily across every age group.

That’s the backdrop for everything that follows. Paying by phone is already an established habit for millions of people. The more interesting question now is how digital wallets will develop beyond payments.

From Holding Cards to Holding Your Account

One of the most significant changes is happening quietly: digital wallets are beginning to offer more than a convenient way to use cards issued elsewhere. Increasingly, digital wallets are being integrated with current and savings accounts.

That means opening a current account and a savings account from the same app you pay with, seeing your real balance update the moment money moves, and managing everything in one place instead of switching between a banking app and a payment app. It’s a genuinely better everyday experience: fewer apps, fewer logins, and a clearer picture of what you actually have.

SSV SmartAccount is designed around this approach. It brings the digital wallet experience together with current and savings accounts in one app, while the underlying bank accounts are provided by Griffin Bank, a regulated UK bank that holds and safeguards customers’ eligible deposits.

More Ways to Pay, More Choice

Alongside contactless mobile payments, another option is becoming increasingly familiar: paying a retailer directly from your bank account. Often called Pay by Bank, it works through open banking, and it’s simpler than it sounds. You choose it at checkout, pick your bank, and approve the payment in your banking app with Face ID, a fingerprint or your passcode. No card number to type, nothing for the retailer to store.

It’s growing quickly, reaching 351 million open banking payments in the UK in 2025, a 57% increase year on year. In 2026 major retailers including Amazon UK and eBay added it at checkout, which is how most people will first come across it.

Pay by Bank also reduces the need to enter or share card details with a retailer. Each payment is authorised through the customer’s bank, using the bank’s own security process. For you, the practical benefit is straightforward: another option, fewer details typed into websites, and money coming straight from the balance you can see.

More Control in Your Hands

Customers are also gaining more control over how contactless payments work for them.

Contactless is the good example. Since March 2026, UK banks and providers with strong fraud controls have been able to set their own contactless limits rather than following a single national cap, and the regulator has encouraged them to let customers set their own limit or turn contactless off entirely. Many banks already offer exactly that in their apps. In practice most providers are moving carefully and have kept familiar limits for now, so you’re unlikely to notice an abrupt change, but the direction is toward you deciding what suits you.

Underneath all of it, the protections you’d expect stay in place. If a payment is made without your authorisation, for example after a card is lost or stolen, you’re still covered by the usual UK rules, whatever limit your provider has set.

Security Keeps Pace With Convenience

As wallets take on more, a fair question follows: does all this convenience come at the cost of safety? In practice, the protections have grown alongside the features, and digital wallets include security features that can provide additional protection compared with entering or sharing physical card details.

Three things are working quietly in the background every time you pay. Your real card number is never shared with the retailer, because it’s replaced by a one-off code that’s useless to anyone else. Every payment is approved by your face or fingerprint, so a lost phone isn’t a lost card. And instant notifications mean you see anything unexpected within seconds rather than at the end of the month.

The one thing worth checking yourself is what sits behind the app. A wallet is how you reach your money; a regulated bank is what protects it. If the account behind your wallet is provided by an authorised UK bank, your eligible deposits are FSCS protected, currently up to £120,000 per eligible person, per UK-authorised bank, building society or credit union. That combination, an app that’s easy to use and a bank that’s properly regulated, is what you’re looking for.

Frequently Asked Questions