The extent of digital innovation has radically changed the consumption and business models of entire market sectors and is also increasingly impacting the financial sector. The report of the same name is dedicated to the phenomenon of Digital Finance Innovation DIGIFIN, promoted by I-Com (Institute for Competitiveness) together with its partners Agos Ducato, BNL, Credem, Edenred and MasterCard, which is being presented today in Rome in the presence of various protagonists from institutions, research, companies and the Authorities.
“While, in recent years, digital innovation has proven to be an epoch-making phenomenon for the economy, the crisis has laid bare the raw nerve of finance, which must necessarily be close to transformations, even in an innovative key, of those who produce wealth” – he notes Stefano da Empoli, President of I-Com and curator of the Report together with David Pelilli, Director of the DIGIFIN Observatory of I-Com – "We believe that the DIGIFIN Report, which we are launching today, can contribute to understanding the complex dynamics which, between regulation, technology and literacy, revolve around to the moving universe of digital finance”.
Electronic payments
The diffusion of electronic payment instruments confirms the positive results of the fight against cash in Europe. By aggregating and reprocessing the data from the most authoritative international sources, I-Com has focused on a scenario that can be summarized as follows:
- Europe closed 2013 with over 100 billion of electronic payments (+22,3% compared to 2009). According to Capgemini, this figure is set to rise to $177 billion in 2020;
- In the ranking of the top 10 European countries by number of electronic transactions, Italy is in fifth place with 4,5 billion transactions executed in 2013. In the first places, Germany (about 20 billion), UK (19,7 billion) and France (18 billion);
- Il transfer remains the most used payment instrument in Europe, with 224.913 billion euros in 2013;
- The real protagonists of the fight against cash are the payment cards, which however produce only 0,9% of the EU total in terms of the amount transacted. However, this is a rapidly growing market: by 2018, it will be close to 100 billion transactions (European Banking Authority);
E-Commerce and consumer credit
According to the 2014 European B2C E-Commerce report, this sector in 2013 moved resources for over 363 billion euros (+16,3% compared to 2012), with a significant contribution from Western European countries (50%), such as the UK and Germany. In 2014, Italian online sites developed a sales volume of 13,2 billion euros (+17% on 2013).
The diffusion of devices such as tablets and smartphones is contributing significantly to the significant growth of electronic commerce, which, in turn, are among the causes of the convergence between e-payments and mobile payment. In this regard, the I-Com report highlights that:
- A 60,8% growth in mobile transactions is expected between 2010 and 2015 (World Payment Report 2014);
- In 2013, the turnover deriving from mobile commerce in Italy amounted to 694,4 million euros;
- The importance of non-banking operators is growing: in 2015 they will account for 15% of the total m-payment transactions, almost double compared to 2011 (Capgemini);
- The value of mobile transactions could reach 721 billion euros in 2017, with over 450 million users (Gartner).
I-Com focuses on the potential impact of consumer credit on e-commerce, if the possibility of its use were equal to traditional retail sales. In fact, by re-parameterizing the incidence rate of the Consumer credit on retail sales (7,2% in 2014), we obtain that the annual potential of this method of financing the e-commerce sector would be equal to approx 950 million euro.
In our country, the unexpressed potential of consumer credit to support e-commerce has been quantified at 4,5 billion euros for the three-year period 2015-2017.
Among the interventions to be implemented to make this scenario concrete, the introduction of new methods of disbursement of loans, the opening up to electronic identification and the dematerialisation of processes, the adoption of multi-channel models, the expansion of the distribution network of consumer credit ai online merchant and support for consumer financial literacy.
Banks tested by Social Networks – The I-Com ranking
According to a survey conducted by KPMG in 2013 on 21 of the major Italian banking institutions, social media are rapidly spreading in the financial sector, with 90% of the sample present on the net with their own social channels.
Starting from this scenario, I-Com analyzed the performances on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of the 6 major banking institutions present in Italy. A ranking emerged, updated on 22 December 2014. Unicredit is at the top of the general classification with 63 points out of 100, narrowly ahead of BNL (45/100) and Intesa Sanpaolo (41/100).
Compared to financial operators operating on the European market, Italian banks register however a high rate of backwardness with respect to the use of new social channels. Even though it ranks third in the European ranking, Unicredit shows a significant delay compared to the top positions occupied by England (Barclays) and France (Crédit Agricole):
- Barclays it is first on Facebook, with 551.000 fans (against Unicredit's 270.752);
- Deutsche Bank De it is first on Twitter, with 105.000 followers (against Unicredit's 3.800);
- Credit Agricole it is first on YouTube, 9 million views (compared to 4 million for Unicredit).
On the other hand, the social performance of online banks is relatively more encouraging, which I-Com summarizes in a dedicated ranking. What a Bank! e ING Direct are positioned in the first two places, above all thanks to the results achieved on Facebook (154.000 fans each), while Banca Mediolanum takes third place, thanks to the quality of interaction with customers, especially on Twitter (high number of retweets by followers).
A special mention goes to Widiba, the new online bank of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which is positioned in fourth place in the general classification: on the market since September 2014, Widiba immediately activated profiles on all social networks, climbing the positions consolidated over time by its competitors in just a few months . With 25.000 followers, the bank is already first on Twitter, while on Facebook it is on the verge of establishing the primacy of Che Banca! and ING Direct, with its 125.000 fans.
