Shoppers are flocking to supermarkets to spend their cash with nearly 60p in every £1 spent in stores such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda, new research shows.

A report by spending watchdog The Payments Council, revealed that £181bn was spent in supermarkets in 2011 – 58p in every retail pound, compared to 46p a decade earlier.

The changing trend was due to supermarkets expanding from food into clothing, homeware and entertainment categories and heavy discounting, the study said.

Petrol purchases also set supermarket tills ringing with 33p in every pound spent on fuel - almost triple the amount taken over a decade ago.

Consumers have also changed the way they pay - debit card spending has risen almost fourfold since 2001, while cheque usage continues to halve every five years, The Payments Council said.

According to Adrian Kamellard, Payments Council chief executive, shoppers scarcely notice the steady changes in the way they pay, yet someone in their thirties today would see more change in their lifetime than in the entire history of money.

“Even recent innovations such as payment via mobile phone, which ten years ago some felt to be science fiction, will soon be commonplace,” he said.

“The 2000s were the decade of the debit card. The 2010s are likely to be the decade of the mobile phone. Just as we can’t imagine how we ever did without the internet, many people will soon wonder how we used to be so dependent on cash and cheque. Twenty years from now even cards may seem archaic.”