The online payment market - Italy

1.1 Definition and scope of study

E-commerce and online shopping are becoming more and more common in our daily lives, serving as a fast cheap, and convenient means of shopping, paying for bills, and transferring money. To differentiate and succeed in this industry, innovation is key in order to reap and retain new customers. Another important factor to the online payment market is security: since transactions are done through a third party, the trust factor becomes very important. The online payment market can be segmented by component (solutions and services), development type (on-premises and cloud), organization size, and region. 

The global online payment market size was valued $79.3 billion in 2020, and it is expected to grow at $154.1 by 2025, experiencing a CAGR of 14.2% through the period. 

The main trigger of such expected growth is represented by the rise in the adoption of contactless payments, which helps reduce customer queues and hassles, and provide better results in the form of higher revenue for retailers. However, another important factor for such trend is represented by e-commerce, which also includes delivery services. In Italy, despite the pandemic was going on, 5.2 billion of transactions have been settled through online payment services in 2020, representing the 33% of the total amount of payments made in the country. Naturally, the fact that, through an update of the Directive PSD2 about payment services, it is now possible to avoid entering the PIN for transactions under €50, the time needed to make a purchase has been reduced dramatically, giving the customer a higher perception of efficiency.

Nexi S.p.a., Italian company which offers services and infrastructures related to digital payments, registered an increase by 140% in the payments made through a smartphone in physical stores. This trend is also confirmed by the fact that the number of credit cards registered on online payments applications, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, grew by 57% in 2020. Eventually, even Satispay, specialized in payments made through the technology NFC, managed to become a leader in the sector, registering an increase in the total amount of payments by €20 million.