It's all a bit gloomy...

The storm clouds are gathering. Last Friday a trio of reports about the UK economy was released. This, of course, pushed the currency down, again...

It seems that May was not a great month for UK plc. The Manufacturing and Construction sectors both reported drops on the previous year. It's probably important to say that those 2 sectors make up a fifth of our economy... To make things worse our trade deficit went the wrong way too. Then there was news that house prices had increased by the lowest amount in four years. 

Economists and investors are, understandably hesitant and cautious. Brexit has caused all sorts of upset, mainly down to us not knowing what, if any, kind of deal will be struck, and what impact that will have on the economy. There are signs of a slowdown, which will bring harder times. That in turn, will mean less investment, and investors to sell the pound, causing the pound to fall further.

Just as we all thought things couldn't get worse, we ended up with a hung Parliament, causing even more uncertainty. It seems the only certainty we are likely to have is that we are in for a bumpy ride.

Having said all of that, we saw the news that Direct Debit transactions had hit another record. Bacs reported that in one day in June there were 111 million payments processed. It also reported that in 2016 there were 6 and a quarter billion payments worth £4.8 trillion processed. Eazipay has also enjoyed a record year, growing year on year since it was formed. So it's not all doom and gloom.