The crisis has affected the way consumers and businesses interact, heralding slower revenue growth in the short term but favoring the shift to cashless, growing adoption of digital wallets and the more widespread use of business payment automation -to-business. By 2024, stable growth is expected in both card transactions and total cashless transactions. In the Bcg report “Global Payments 2020: Fast Forward into the Future”, the latest developments in the payments market at both global and regional level are photographed, identifying the challenges of the sector and their impact on stakeholders. It will be interesting to verify the impact of policies designed to facilitate the transition to electronic payments and reduce the use of cash.
Continuing to look at payment trends in Italy, in 2019 the number of card transactions per capita reached 57, while cashless transactions reached 92, values that are in line with what happens in countries such as Spain, Malta and Greece, where 103, 96 and 72 card transactions take place respectively per capita. Others loyal to cash, such as Germany and Austria, are in line with the Italian trend, where 68 and 105 card transactions per capita are respectively reached. The Western European average is 172 card transactions and 264 cashless transactions per capita. Northern Europeans remain ahead of the card transaction trends with an average of 389 transactions per capita.
Market outlook:
Given the uncertainty surrounding the ongoing pandemic, BCG has outlined three revenue growth scenarios based on global GDP trends. Still in a quick rebound scenario, BCG’s outlook suggests that the global payments revenue pool will expand from $ 1.5 trillion in 2019 to $ 1.8 trillion in 2024, with a CAGR of 4. 4%. While solid, it is far below the 7.3% annual growth that the sector benefited from from 2014 to 2019. In a slow recovery scenario, however, the global revenue pool would reach $ 1.7 trillion by 2024. with a CAGR of 2.7%. In a more pessimistic scenario, the revenue pool would only grow by a CAGR of 1.1%.
The goal becomes to win on the future. As stated in the report, the payments market is a vibrant market populated by very different players: from big tech to fintech, from issuers to processors, from full service providers to niche operators. All rapidly evolving competitors. Yet there are five general imperatives that unite them: rebalance the product and customer portfolio; research and exploit strategic M&A opportunities and partnerships; become a data-driven organization; strengthen risk management; accelerate digital transformation.
