Cash use in the shops rose for a second year in a row after a decade of falls.

Notes and coins were used in a fifth of transactions last year, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said, as shoppers found cash helped them to budget better, the BBC reported.

The amount spent per purchase also dropped slightly from £22.43 in 2022, to £22.03 last year, it said.

The findings were published after charities told a committee of MPs that numerous groups were excluded from essential services and community venues that had started to refuse cash.

They cited issues for women in abusive relationships, whose partners use a bank account as a form of control or to track their movements, the BBC said.

Some older people and those with mental health issues were also far more comfortable using cash, the Treasury Committee heard, or did not have the digital skills or mental capability to operate only with cards, computers or phones.

Figures published in July from banking trade body UK Finance showed the majority of young people paid for things using smartphones or watches.

Nearly three-quarters (72%) of 18 to 24-year-olds regularly used their digital wallets to make contactless payments.

But it also found the number of people who mainly used cash for day-to-day spending hit a four-year high owing to the cost of living.

The findings surrounding increasing cash usage come amid a surge of bank closures in the UK over the past 10 years.

According to Which?, banks and building societies have closed 6,214 branches since January 2015, at a rate of around 53 each month. This represents 63% of the branches that were open at the start of 2015.

NatWest Group, which comprises NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, has closed 1,428 branches - the most of any banking group. Lloyds Banking Group, made up of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has shut down 1,243 sites.

Barclays is the individual bank that has reduced its network the most, with 1,228 branches now closed.