Electronic direct/ACH and card payments continue to take share from paper transactions in Western Europe, while mobile m-commerce continues to be the most dynamic area of this region’s payments market. The pandemic served to further encourage contactless and digital payments, providing extra impetus to many governments’ drives towards creating cashless societies.
This report comes in PPT.
The regional performance was muted in 2022, with declines seen in a number countries, given the difficult economic backdrop, with high inflation rates putting pressure on households’ disposable incomes. Debit cards remain the most popular type of financial card, while m-commerce continues to record the most dynamic growth rates.
Since the start of the pandemic, electronic payments have benefitted from the rising share of e-commerce in retail sales in Germany, giving emerging online payment players a growing platform. These include BNPL players such as the fintech Klarna, offering consumers an easy and convenient option to pay in instalments, often without an interest rate. The introduction by PayPal, the country’s leading online payment player, of a BNPL option will help further push this service into the mainstream.
A rapid expansion of the banking population has turned Turkey into a breeding ground for financial innovation, with start-ups, fintechs and payment gateways setting up banking and payment tools in the country. This is being bolstered by the alignment of Turkish regulations with the EU’s Payment Service Directive 2, which is designed to encourage cross-collaboration in payments and provide a better-integrated infrastructure for electronic payments.
Tech-savvy local consumers in the UK are increasingly favouring the use of contactless technologies, which was given further impetus during the pandemic. The increase in the number of contactless smart cards being issued, the development of the payment infrastructure and the contactless limit reaching GBP100 per transaction in the UK, which is higher than the average EUR50 in other European markets, are helping to facilitate the expansion and quick adoption of contactless payment methods.
This is the aggregation of ATM, charge, credit, debit, e-purse and retail cards. Note that smart cards are not included in financial cards.
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