May statistics for Swish – the most popular/used local mobile payment system in the world (??)

Swish was launched in 2012 and is today the most popular mobile payment system in the country. Coming from being mostly used for free real-time 24/7 person-to-person payments, Swish is gaining very fast traction also in paying for online (web & app) purchases of goods and services. Here are the latest statistics from the month of May 2019. Quite impressive I think.

Swish statistics, May 2019

• Active users: 7,01 million (population in Sweden is 10 million!)
• Number of payment transactions in May: 45 million
• Total value of transactions in May: 22 159 MSEK (approx 2B Euro)
• Number of users that “swish” every month: 68%
• Number of payment transactions since start (2012): 1B+
• Number of companies (e- & m-commerce and instore) accepting Swish: 3 000
• Number of small companies, organisations & associations accepting Swish: 170 000

 

Digital receipts – a no brainer and environment saver

There has been talks on digital receipts for “too many years” now. I really think it’s time for action – it’s a no brainer!

Svensk Handel (Swedish Trade Federation) estimates that 60 000 trees is shopped down in just one year, just to cover the printed reciepts in Swedish retail alone. This equals 1,7 billion printed receipts in a year. My guesstimate is that 80% of these printed receipts could be “avoided” doing just two things in the physical stores:

•  POS vendors to implement a “digital receipts waste bin” so that a receipt can be securely be transferred to the waste bin when a customer don’t want a receipt. Example from Sweden is Systembolaget (state owned liquor stores) where all receipts are printed and where I believe only 2 out of 10 customers wants a receipt.
• Implement ways, again at POS,  where customers via an identification at the purchase, always get its receipts digitally and only if opted-in for. Example, this could be via customers loyalty membership (it’s presented at many stores to get loyalty points etc.), or coupled to one or more preferred payment cards. Implementing this using the loyalty membership number, will also enable mass adoption of digital receipts.

There is today very good digital receipts technology available in the market, like for example Findity’s  digital receipts platform in Sweden, and now it’s “only” up to POS vendors and Merchants to implement it. It’s small tech projects and it will gain all players in the eco-system and their “longing” customers.

Some obvisous results and gains if implementing digital receipts, examples:

• Environmental, less trees down and less use of chemicals in printing (even though the use of these has been/will be forbidden in market after market).
• Merchant cost savings in paper, ink and in faster checkout serving more customers per time period.
• Better service to consumers, like no more “lost receipts” and less receipts fraud if implemented correctly.
• Digital receipts will also be a real cost saver when used at organisations expense handling administration. Here society will have a real “cost saver killer” and a more secure and friction free handling of receipts and documents.

Digital receipts has been here since start of e-commerce, even though I some times question their security, format and distribution. Now it’s time to “just do it!” for receipts in physical stores. I really believe it’s a win-win-win between merchants, consumers and POS vendors.

Comprehensive report on Nordic e-com 2018, €71B to be spent

This report, by online payment service provider DIBS, includes e-commerce figures and trends for all four Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. In 2018 the people in these countries (totally 27M) will spend €71B on e-commerce.

In 2019 the believe is that Amazon will enter this region with local representation. Result will be? I and many with me, thinks that all e-commerce business and services around (freight, support, add-on business/services, etc.) will flourish and increase the Nordic e-com into record figures for years to come.

Read the full report here; NORDIC_E-Commerce Report_2018 report

90% of Chinese tourists want to pay with mobile

A new Nielsen insight report by Nielsen and Alipay finds that over 90% of Chinese tourists would use mobile payment overseas given the option.

The report includes some interesting figures on the 122 million trips (was up 7% to 131 million in 2017) done abroad by Chines tourists in 2016. Their total spending on these trips in 2016 was USD 261 billion (up 4,5% vs 2015).

The top three categories of spending was 1. shopping, 2. accomodations and 3. dining. The report also shows that 65% used the mobile for local consumption.

So, one thing is very clear, if you as a merchant want to get attention, visits and part of the Chinese tourists spending, you should be partisipating in for example the “super life style app” of Alipay, the world’s largest mobile and lifestyle platform.

 

 

Norway is still best in class using cards for payments

Latest statistics from Norwegian payment company’s Nets and Bank BankAxept shows new record figures for 2017 and the use of cards for payments.

2017 cards was used 1.86 billion times, a 4.5% increase from 2016, for bying goods & services at a total value of 627.7 billion NOK (= 65 billion Euro), a 2.8% increase from 2016.

Local card scheme BankAxept has an outstanding lead, with 85% of the total transaction volume and 80% of the total value of card purchases. Rest of the volume is divided between Visa, Mastercard and AMEX.

Read more here (in Norwegian).

My guess is that Norway continue to have the most cost effective payment infrastructore in the world. Regarding mobile payments in Norway there is still very few transactions done, I believe less than 0.1%. Local player Vipps is making progress for online payments, Samsung Pay is just launched and Apple Pay has launched in all Nordic countries..but not in Norway, a country where iPhone has a more than 50% market share. Can it be a “bank problem” or is Apple awaiting more enabled NFC-terminals in Norway?

 

 

Sweden merchants embrace Swish as payment method – November figures

Swedes loves the real-time payment method Swish, first for doing person-to-person and now more and more when paying for goods and services. Here is some stats on Swish from the month of November 2017. 

• 6+ million active users
• 21.5 million transactions, where of 2M for online purchases
• Total volume “swished”, 12.2 billion SEK (equals €1.23B or $1.45B)
• 140 000 businesses accepting P2B Swish payment
• 1 400 online shops

Big online retailers also start accepting Swish. Remarkable examples that has gained nice traction are Svenska Spel, Swedens largest betting company, where 40+% of online/inapp transactions is paid with Swish, ATG, large horse betting, sees 30+% of online/inapp transactions paid with Swish and “late onboarder” SJ, largest train operating company, where 50% of inapp and 1/3 of online purchases is paid with Swish.

Early this year when Swish was launched for online/inapp purchases, the Swish chairman of the board said that “Swish will take 20% in 2 years”, I think it will go faster.

Snapshot Norway – Card Volumes October 2017

Norway has the most effective payment infrastructure in the world. Interesting is to see how and why, so here is a snapshot of volumes and transactions during October 2017 (figures posted at Finans Norge). Local card scheme BankAxept is used in 86% of all card purchases.

October 2017

• Total card volume, 50.6 billion NOK
• Total number of card transactions, 154.8 million tx
• Volume via local scheme BankAxept, 40.7 billion NOK (80% of total volume)
• Transactions via BankAxept, 133.4 million tx (86% of total card tx’s)
• Rest of the transactions volume was via different international cards, credit cards and digital gift cards.
• Almost 60% of the BankAxept transaction volume was on purchases below 200 NOK (= €22)

My estimate is that cards in Norway stands for approx 85% of the payment transactions in the country, amazing.

 

Alipay mobile payments performed 90% of Alibaba sales volume during “11.11”

China Singles Day 2017, or “11.11” as it also is called, created a new record for Alibaba and fantastic numbers last Saturday. Total sales was at Alibaba was $25.3 billion, 1.5 billion transactions and 90% of the sales was settled on mobile via Alipay. That’s 17k transactions per second during the shopping hysteria day :-).

Read more here.

 

Mobile payment Sweden update – One in/one out

SEQR (by Seamless) was launched in Sweden in 2011, starting as a QR-based mobile payment method, later adding NFC. SEQR was at merchant chains in Sweden as Hemköp, Willys and McDonalds used SEQR instore, but all is taken’ away.

Seamless is also active in a few other countries, like Germany, Netherlands, Spain, USA and France. The company now say that it “probably” will close down or sell its B2C business for SEQR, to put more focus into B2B-payments.

On Tuesday next week (Oct 24) Apple Pay will be launched in Sweden and in Finland and Denmark, but not in Norway. It will from start be backed by Nordea as first bank, and will be available at merchants 7-Eleven, Pressbyrån & Elgiganten.

                              

Cash in Sweden is dead after March 24, 2023

Two scientist’s from The KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and The Copenhagen Business School, has calculated when cash is not longer accepted at Swedish merchants. The date is calculated as of the trend of cash usage in Sweden and is set to March 24, 2023, only 5½ year’s from now..

The study was done with 741 merchants and shows that 97% of the merchants accepts cash, but that only 18% of consumers transactions are cash. Card payments are dominating with only 0,4% of all transactions done via mobile.

Driving force beside that consumers more and more use cards, is the increase of cash handling cost’s for merchants.

A project called e-krona initiated by The Riksbank, Sweden’s Central Bank, could help consumers that want an anonymous way to pay. The Riksbank say that a decision to introduce e-krona could be taken’ two years from now.