Global Online Payment Methods 2021: Post COVID-19

This report provides insights into the current state and future trends of the online and mobile payment market in the world. Among other findings, the publication reveals that globally blockchain is expected to be used mostly for cross-border payments and settlements in 2021.

As a result of the poor card infrastructure in many countries, QR code payments were projected to accelerate considerably globally by 2025

The online payments industry around the world has accelerated in 2020, which resulted in merchants and customers adopting digital payments following the COVID-19 outbreak, leading to increased use of digital wallets, and the number is expected to increase of accounts between 2020 and 2025 with a CAGR of over 10%, and the global value of spending on digital wallets is expected to nearly double by 2025. Contactless and e-Commerce payments are projected to account for a half of total wallet spending by 2025. In addition, QR code payments were also predicted to enhance and to be used by almost 3 in 10 smartphone owners worldwide by 2025, and this was believed to be stronger due to the poor infrastructure of the card in emerging markets.

Biometrics including fingerprint, iris, voice and facial recognition were crucial in online payments for consumers and payment service providers in 2020

As online payments accelerated, so did the risk of becoming a victim of fraud and the demand for security measures. Features as fingerprints, iris, voice recognition and face recognition are vital for consumers and payment service providers to make online payments more secure, thus raise consumers' confidence in 2020. The value of mobile payments authenticated by biometric data is forecasted to increase substantially globally from 2020 to 2025 to reach over three trillion U.S. dollars.

Despite the BNPL solution gaining momentum in 2020, credit cards still accounted for the significant share of purchases in the UK

The BNPL solution was also another extensively developing payment method around the world. In the USA, the most popular providers of the following services are PayPal, Afterpay, Klarna, Affirm and Quadpay. Common reasons among the surveyed consumers for using the following service are purchases that otherwise do not fit into the budget, avoiding credit card interest, borrowing money without a credit check and others. PayPal Credit and Klarna were also commonly used in the UK in 2020, but still credit cards held most part of purchases.

Report Coverage

• This report covers the global online payment market. It takes into account a wide definition of online payment, including payment methods used in online shopping and mobile payment, such as remote and proximity payments. In addition, information related to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on digital payments worldwide is included in this report.
• The report includes data mostly published in the previous 12 months. The exact date of publication of the source is stated on each chart. The time period which the data refers to differs by source. 

Report Structure

• The global chapter opens the report, featuring an overview of global online and mobile payment developments. 
• The rest of the report is divided by regions. Within each region, the countries are grouped by advanced and emerging markets, where applicable. Furthermore, text charts summarizing the impact of COVID-19 on digital payments in each of the regions are included.
• Depending on data availability, the following types of market information are included: payment methods most used by online and mobile shoppers, breakdown of e-Commerce orders by payment methods, number and value of online/mobile/alternative payment transactions, online/mobile/alternative payment user penetration, and consumer and merchant attitudes to online and mobile payments. Not all the mentioned types of information are available for each of the covered countries. 

Please note: For this report, the purchase of an Enterprise license allows up to ten worldwide users of an organization access to the report