Buoyed by the boom in the digitalization of payments since the start of the pandemic, Europe's major digital payment players reported a sharp rise in results for the first half of 2021.
The pandemic has accelerated the rise of digital payments
To reduce the risk of transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, consumers have massively turned to contactless payments since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The move away from cash has also benefited mobile payments.
In the Nordic countries, notably Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the adoption rate for mobile payments is the highest in Europe, at 40% for Denmark, 25% for Norway and 36% for Sweden. In the UK, cash lost the battle to card payments in stores long before the pandemic began, with the latter outpacing the former as early as 2017.
Whatever the speed of adoption of digital payments, digitization is progressing everywhere in Europe, boosted by the pandemic. Retailers, for their part, are also massively equipping themselves with payment terminals to be able to respond to new consumer habits.
Europe's major digital payment players boosted by the health context
The boom in digital payments is benefiting Europe's major digital payment players, who posted excellent results for the 1st half of the year.
Dutch fintech Adyen, for example, saw its net revenues rise by 46% year-on-year to 445 million euros. Payment volumes rose by 67%, from €129 billion to €216 billion, compared with a more limited increase of 23% the previous year.
The value of in-store transactions managed by Adyen has doubled in the space of a year, thanks in particular to various partnerships forged between the Dutch fintech and retailers such as McDonald's in the UK.
French electronic payments specialist Worldline, Adyen's main European competitor, has also seen its results boosted by the health crisis. In the first half of 2021, its net earnings amounted to 276 million euros, compared with 115 million euros in the first half of 2020, for a total transaction value of 400 billion euros.