- 3 novembro, 2020

Comscore Snapshots: online finance in Europe

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.