The 2020 pandemic boosted fintech and digital payments

The 2020 pandemic boosted fintech and digital payments

A Happy New Year to everyone from the Creditum team. We hope you have been enjoying watching the events in the cryptocurrency space as much as we all have been, with Bitcoin racing past $30,000 to kick-start a great new year for cryptocurrency owners.

The past year will not be easily or quickly forgotten. The coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a shocking standstill, and we have seen several industry sectors badly hit by it, especially hospitality and travel. How quickly they recover remains to be seen.

All things digital thrive

However, there is one sector that has flourished thanks to the pandemic, and that is all things digital. With so many people confined to their homes for long periods, online shopping has experienced a high level of growth, as have digital payments and other fintech products. For example, digital payments for e-commerce transactions rose by 81% during Italy’s lockdown in April, according to a McKinsey report.

As many outlets have reported, tech companies benefited most from the pandemic, and were as CNBC says, “ahead of the curve from the beginning.” The tech companies were also the fastest responders in terms of adopting work from home for their employees. It also says, as does Bill gates, that the biggest tech companies in the world will come out of the pandemic even stronger, with the relatively unknown company Zoom making such an impact that it is on its way to touching the leader board occupied by Apple and Amazon — both huge winners in 2020.

Fintech sees a rise in consumer confidence

The pandemic also changed the way people handled their finances, with physical banks mostly closed for weeks at a time, and so increasing the use of fintech services.

Fintech News reports the findings of the 2020 Global COVID-19 Fintech Market Rapid Assessment Study, released on 3rd December, which surveyed 1,385 fintech firms operating in 169 countries. It shows the following strongest growth areas: digital custody (+36%), digital asset exchange (+33%), digital savings (+26%), wealthtech (+24%) and digital payments (21%).

This surge started even as Covid-19 began its spread, with European fintech apps seeing a 72% rise in use at the end of March 2020. Finextra says, “Even consumers who had a stubborn preference for in-person shopping are opening accounts for digital payment services. PayPal, one of the biggest online payment processors, gained 20.2 million new accounts in 2020 Q1.” And then PayPal decided to offer its 346 million users access to crypto payments in 2021, allowing them to both buy and sell Bitcoin, which had a ‘lit up’ effect on the digital payments sector.

What we are seeing is that fintech adoption, which was expected to take years, was shortened to just a few months as a result of the pandemic. As Finextra says: “the dominant players in the fintech industry are well poised to deliver the digital needs of consumers and will ultimately be ingrained in consumers habits even after a vaccine is finally found.”

It won’t be long now until the Creditum app with its multicurrency account (fiat and crypto) goes live. Sign up for your Creditum multicurrency account at https://creditum.io/