How has Covid increased the use of eWallet?
During this pandemic, how many of us have switched to contactless payments? Mobile and digital payments are here to stay, whether it’s through the use of a digital wallet (or e-wallet), a card-not-present transaction (such as how we pay for our Aliexpress or Grubhub food and other goods), a private label debit app on our smartphone, or use of ACH. Consumers can make secure purchases without the use of cash. The use of digital payments is growing by the day.
E-wallets, often referred to as digital wallets, are tools that enable seamless payments for the purchase of online goods and services. Thanks to continuing technological advancements, eWallets can securely and conveniently store all of a consumer’s payment details. E-wallets largely eliminate the need to bring a physical wallet. They also have a phone-based payment method for shopping online ( e.g. PayPal) or even at the petrol station (e.g. Apple Pay). Some digital wallets give users not only flexibility, but also incentives and perks for using it.
Retailers, venture capitalists, and investors are all trying to wrap their heads around the trends in retail and payments since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has influenced people’s perceptions, needs, and acquisition patterns in a matter of a few months, rather than years, as critics suspected. According to Mordor Intelligence’s 2019 Mobile Payments Market – Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2020-2025) update, debit cards will prove to be the most popular payment method in 2020, yet cash, the other most prominent mode of payment, would be superseded by e-wallets by 2022, making it the least common. The need for cash is declining, but a cashless economy is approaching faster than anyone expected.
According to the Statista 2020 Fintech report, over 81 percent of UK citizens used some form of online payment in 2019, its highest share globally. While there has been a significant spike in the amount of citizens adopting mobile payment apps; in the UK, digital eWallet apps attract nearly a million new subscribers annually.
