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 |
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.