Payments between UK nations made up 7.6% of recorded business payment value in 2025

Organisations in Wales sent 73.8% of the value of their recorded payments to England last year, according to an analysis of bank payments by the Office for the Internal Market.

The figures appear in a data strategy update published on Friday. It draws on a dataset released by the ONS in January that records monthly payments between organisations from 2019 to 2025, made through Faster Payments, Bacs Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit. Consumer payments are excluded.

Cross-nation payments made up 7.6% of the value recorded in 2025. The share was 7.2% in 2019 and has stayed at 7.6% since 2021, which the office describes as broadly stable, even during the pandemic.

Where each nation's payments went

England: 96.2% of the value of outgoing payments stayed in England.

Northern Ireland: 58.5% stayed in Northern Ireland and 39.2% went to England.

Scotland: 37.5% stayed in Scotland and 61.5% went to England.

Wales: 24.6% stayed in Wales and 73.8% went to England.

Wholesale and retail was the largest sector in cross-nation payments, at 35% of the value, followed by manufacturing at 13% and administrative and support services at 12%.

Limits of the data

The figures are a partial picture. The sample covers over 3.4 million organisations, about 40% of the UK total, and some payments cannot be assigned to a region or industry. Values are not adjusted for inflation.

The biggest caveat is location. A payment may be recorded against a company's head office and not the place where the money was spent, so the regional split may not show where activity took place.

The office plans to look further at the data in its next annual report and has invited others to work with it on patterns by sector and region. It expects ONS interregional trade estimates for 2022 and 2023 to be available in the first quarter of 2027.