A recent study by the bank comparator Panorabanques, carried out with the Poll&Roll institute, points to the banking behavior of the French, particularly in terms of payment.
We learn, as expected, that the bank card is by far the most used means of payment. With it, we make 20 payments per month of €28 on average, more and more contactless (86% of French people use it) and 1.5 withdrawals. However, 64% of French people still use cash in stores and fewer of us (19%) use our mobile to pay for our purchases than write checks at least once a month (24%). Only 37% of 18-24 year olds hardly write checks anymore; while 15% of French people still go to a branch to make transfers.
Basically, over the last decade, the payment landscape hasn’t changed much. In this area, progress is slow. More than ten years, that was the time it took for contactless payment, the main development, to consolidate.
Conservatism? Certainly not. Because, at the same time, our methods of spending and buying are changing much more rapidly. We realize this relatively little because banks continue to focus on the means of payment they issue, rather than on purchase uses, which depend much less on them. And against which they even show some delay.
Bonuses, invoices and promotions
Today, therefore, sharing expenses with several people has become an increasingly common and frequent use. A number of commercial sites, particularly in the tourism sector, acknowledge, more openly than many banks, pots as means of payment in their own right.
Similarly, resale prospects on online platforms are increasingly factored into purchasing decisions. The practice has become common. However, in France, how many payment apps make it easy for people to issue invoices?
The demands for services associated with spending are increasingly varied: from the integration of contextual data (photos of items purchased or scans of tickets, for example) to psychological safeguards (such as anti-addiction filters), going through the search for prices or discounts. However, favoring simplicity and security, French banks offer little in response to these requests.
To make shopping online easier, more than a third of Internet users register their bank details on the merchant sites they visit the most. But few establishments have thought to develop their applications to provide the same convenience, while ensuring a practice that seems to be becoming more widespread.
Delay in social payment
Banks offer new means of payment that are slowly adopted to the extent that, in themselves, they change little in their use. That, are rather new actors who are responsible for it. Like those that promoted installment payments in record time. Like Amazon, with its invisible payments in store or by voice in the car.
But it is especially Venmo (created in 2009) that best illustrates the decisive impact of focusing on uses instead of tools. And that it also represents, without a doubt, the best example of a fintech that, in ten years, has managed to become a brand (in France, however, we have Lydia).
In the United States, in fact,to venmo” it would be entering the common language to designate payments between people. Venmo has been able to change the way payments are used by treating transactions as real interactions. Appeared in the social media boom, Venmo invented social payment. You have created a network where you can see who pays what and to whom. The idea was bold. It was successful because it immediately made a difference, at the same time that very quickly Venmo toned it down (possibility to pay online in private mode) and complemented it (split payments, of which Venmo was almost the pioneer in the United States, customization of regulations with comments, emojis, etc.).
Today, at Venmo, social payment is just an option and the fintech -acquired by Paypal- offers more and more general payment solutions (even by card). Venmo has gained 70 million users and 2 million deals. The banks had to establish a comparable common solution: Zelle (in France, there is also Paylib). Because it was the banks that found themselves competing with Venmo!
Source: BFM TV
