Comscore Snapshots: online finance in Europe

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

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

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

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

Table 3. Top finance-related sites and apps

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