Member Article

What’s your number? Brits have 47 contacts average

The average ‘social circle’ that we contact at least monthly contains 26 people – 12 of which are close friends or family

Men have twice as many contacts they have never called as women

Britain’s bulging contact books are continuing to grow with an estimated 440 million1 phone numbers added to mobiles over the last year, according to new research from Paym, the easy way to pay friends and family using a mobile number.

On average, each mobile phone user has 47 phone numbers saved in their contacts, with 18-34 year olds having more (53) than people aged over 55 years old, who typically have 35 numbers saved. It is clear that our mobile phone’s contact books are vital for helping us keep in touch with our nearest and dearest – we count 12 of our saved numbers as close friends or family, and contact an average of 26 of the people saved in our phone at least once a month.

Most people’s phones play host to a few ‘non-tacts’ too – people whose numbers they have saved but never used. And men own up to doing this twice as often as women – the average male phone book has four unused numbers, compared to two for women.

Text is the most popular way to communicate – we are more likely to send a text message (68% of people do so at least fortnightly) than make a call from a mobile (59%). Other popular ways to stay in touch are calling from a landline (50%), messaging on WhatsApp (47%), or emailing (42%). A fifth like to Skype (21%), while one in 20 still write a letter (6%).

On average, people would like to see more of seven people from their contact book and many are planning to make it happen during 2016. Three in five people surveyed (58%) said they plan to spend more time with their family this year, and nearly a third (31%) want to see more of their close friends.

People are most likely to plan to catch up with friends by visiting each other’s homes (54%), going to a restaurant (43%) or heading to a bar for drinks (38%), where splitting the bill could come in handy.

Craig Tillotson, Chairman of Paym, said:

“Catching up with friends often raises the age-old British question of how to split the bill. Paym is a quick, easy, safe way to send and receive money between friends and family – all you need is their mobile number. The money is transferred within minutes, so you can spend less time splitting change and enjoy catching up with the people that matter to you in 2016.”

Paym is a simple, secure way to send and receive payments straight to a current account using just a mobile number – either by selecting it from the mobile phone contacts book or typing it in directly. Anyone using Paym to send money is able to confirm the name of the recipient before sending the payment too, so they can be sure they’re sending it to the right place.

More than 3 million people have registered their mobile number to receive payments via Paym and the service is available on more than nine out of 10 current accounts, with over £100m sent since the service launched in April 2014.

It also seems the UK’s mobile phone contact books are set to keep growing - on average, people have added nine contacts and deleted five in the last 12 months, and one in 12 (8%) people say they have more than 100 contacts saved on their phone.

Liverpudlians rank as the most close-knit Brits with 15 close friends and family members saved in their contact list, while residents of Sheffield revealed they have added only nine contacts for close family and friends to their mobile.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paym .