Retail
The £2.2bn Switch: where UK spending went in H1 2026 — and where it goes next
UK tracked card spend fell 1.2% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, to £71.5bn — the first decline in our four-year series. Read that as a consumer in retreat, and you’ll misread the entire year. This is not a story of retrenchment. It’s a story of redirection. Households paid £2.2bn less to energy and broadband providers in H1, re-spent 60p of every £1 saved, and banked the remaining 40p. Strip household bills out of the numbers and spending actually rose 2.4%.
The biggest structural shift in our dataset
Utilities’ share of wallet has fallen from 26.4% in 2023 to 20.5% today — a six-point structural handback in three years, and the biggest shift we’ve measured. Energy suppliers alone returned £1,759m to households in H1 2026; broadband switching handed back a further £475m. Where did the money go? Into e-commerce (+£382m), specialty grocery (+£186m), discounter grocers (+£132m), taxis (+£124m), apparel (+£106m) and airlines (+£94m). The result is a changing of the guard: Retail is now the UK’s biggest tracked category at 29.3% of wallet, edging past Grocery’s 28.3%.
Not every pound found a new home. Of the £2,193m released by bills, £1,343m reappeared across other categories — and roughly £850m left tracked spend altogether, saved or spent beyond the panel.
Value and premium both win. The middle pays for it.
Grocery added £544m (+2.8%), but the growth sits at the two ends of the market. Discounters grew visits 6.4%; high-end grocers grew them 6.9%. Both ends of the barbell are taking trips from the middle: the Big Grocers lost visits (−1.4%) and held spend only through bigger baskets (+2.6% ATV).
And quiet inflation is back. Grocery basket values rose 1.9% — three times the pace of the two prior years — while meal kits sold through grocers grew 23.8% even as DTC meal-kit subscriptions fell 5.5%
The casualties are mid-priced commitments
What consumers cut isn’t essentials — it’s the mid-priced, committed, book-ahead purchase: the £30 sit-down meal, the package holiday, the monthly box, the big family day out. Full-service restaurants fell 6.1%, a second consecutive decline that takes their share of restaurant spend from 11.7% in 2023 to 9.9%. Package holidays dropped 3.2% while airlines grew 5.6% — travellers are self-assembling their trips. Subscription-box trips fell 10%, with beauty DTC collapsing 36.9%; only needs-based subscriptions like pets (+4.3%) and health (+4.7%) held. And big days out fell hardest, with amusement parks down 21.1%.
Even the apparent winner looks fragile. Fast food grew 5.3% — but every point of it is price. Trips fell 4.2% while transaction values rose 9.9%. Growth built on charging fewer visitors more is a churn risk, not a success story. Expect an H2 value war.
What H2 looks like
The monthly data points one way. Headline spend turns positive in Q3 as 2025’s energy price cuts annualise out of the comparison. E-commerce — six straight months of acceleration, +10.3% in June — owns peak season from Prime Day through Black Friday to Christmas. Apparel goes negative without intervention, after an eight-point deceleration in six months. The value war spreads from grocery loyalty pricing to QSR discounting. Travel books later and shorter. And pharmacy keeps compounding, growing 65–75% in every month of H1 — on track to roughly double 2024 levels by year-end.
What advertisers should do while the money is in motion
Each shift needs a different brief — and this is precisely where Card-Linked Offers and Cardlytics Insights earn their keep.
Grocers should fight on trips, not baskets: with spend held up by inflation alone, offers must defend visit frequency against both discounters and premium switchers. Retailers should start peak season early — e-commerce momentum says pull Q4 acquisition forward, and apparel brands need conquesting and basket-building before the decline hardens. Restaurants should buy back the lost visit with frequency-based offers that attack the trips problem directly. Travel brands should move offers closer to departure and target lapsed package-holiday spenders with DIY trip components — flights, stays, taxis. Subscription brands should put retention before acquisition: with trips down 10%, churn-saving offers are the priority. And everyone should court the wellness wallet — pharmacy is the fastest-growing high-value audience in our panel, relevant to health, beauty, fitness and grocery advertisers alike. The £2.2bn switch is still in motion. The brands that win H2 will be the ones that meet the money where it’s moving — not where it used to live.