British shoppers use their credit cards more often than consumers in any other country in the European Union.
Two-thirds of all credit card spending in the EU was made by UK shoppers during 2001, with an average of 150 transactions made every second in Britain, a study for the Credit Card Research Group (CCRG) found.
Last year in the UK, credit and debit card use accounted for £209 billion and represented more than 50 per cent of high street trading - an increase of almost 20 per cent in ten years.
CCRG said the findings did not mean that Britons were more in debt than any other EU member state.
Debt varied from country to country with UK shoppers reaching for the plastic and German spenders opting for larger overdrafts.
Melanie Johnson, minister for competition, consumers and markets, said: "This shows the use of credit and debit cards is growing in the EU and consumers in the UK are at the forefront in terms of their use of these cards."
The research revealed spending on credit and debit cards in the UK was equivalent to 20.3 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, compared with an EU average of 9.6 per cent.
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