- November 3, 2020

Comscore Snapshots: online finance in Europe

Alex Gevers
Alex Gevers
Insights Director
Comscore

In this week’s edition of Comscore Snapshots, we look at the consumption of finance-related services in Europe. Our analysis includes statistics for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Scope: We include websites and mobile apps that provide financial services such as online payments, banking, trading, insurance, personal finance, and investments. Examples include Paypal and La Caixa.

Top line observations

Table 1: In Italy, Spain and the UK well over 80% of the digital population accessed a digital finance website or app in August 2020. In most markets however, the economic uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have negatively impacted YOY visitations to such finance-related sites. Italy bucked the trend with 6.6% more people making use of these services, compared with usage from the previous year.

Table 2: Online finance is a crowded place: traditional banks (such as BNP Paribas in France, Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe in Germany, and so on) and young startups (such as Klarna, Monzo or Revolut) compete for a slice of the market. As a result, many entities have achieved a share of 1% or more of the audience. Fewer – but still a significant number – have reached over 5% of the audience, or, one in twenty digital consumers. Whether the European market can sustain such a large number of outfits in online finance is unclear. Economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic is likely to lead to some consolidation among these players in the coming years. 

Table 3: Compared with the Asia-Pacific region, in Europe brick-and-mortar banks and financial entities dominate the consumer finance landscape. Among the digital pure plays, Paypal is arguably the most successful one.


Table 1. Reach of finance-related websites and apps 

  % reach of total digital population Year-on-Year percentage points variation
 (August 2020 vs August 2019)
France 59.7 -11.2
Germany 72.9 +0.3
Italy 86.8 +6.6
Spain 82.8 -7.6
UK 84.3 -1.5

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, August 2020, EU5 region.

Table 2. Market competitiveness and consumer adoption of finance-related sites and apps 

  Number of finance-related websites or mobile apps that reach more than 1% of the total digital population Number of finance-related websites or mobile apps that reach more than 5% of the total digital population
France 20 9
Germany 35 6
Italy 44 8
Spain 42 11
UK 64 13

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, August 2020, EU5 region.

Table 3. Top finance-related sites and apps 

Country Entity Description
France Groupe Credit Agricole Banking and financial services
Germany PayPal Online payments system
Italy PayPal Online payments system
Spain La Caixa Banking and financial services
UK PayPal Online payments system

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, August 2020, EU5 region.

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