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IndustryUpdate

Digital commerce spend PARTNERSHIPS
to reach $19 trillion

A new study from Juniper Research Alipay, Worldline expand partnership
found that global spending on digi- Alipay, a payment and lifestyle platform operated by Ant Financial Services
tal commerce will reach $18.7 tril- Group, and Worldline, a European provider of payment and transactional
lion by 2024, up from $11.2 trillion services, expanded their long-lasting partnership to broaden the acceptance
in 2019 and an increase of 66 percent of Asian payment wallets across Europe. "As part of the enhanced partner-
over the five-year period. Digital ship, Worldline will bring more Asian e-wallet users to Europe by allowing
Commerce: Key Trends, Sectors & merchants' POS systems to accept not only payments from Alipay's proprie-
Forecasts 2019-2024 found the larg- tary wallet, but also from Alipay's e-wallet partners across Asia," the partners
est single digital commerce sector stated. "This multiwallet acceptance will mean that merchants across Europe
is the remote purchase of physical will see increased footfall and spend from tourists from all over Asia."
goods, which will have driven just
under 27 percent of all digital com- HempMeds, Sezzle team up
merce spend by the end of 2019,
according to Juniper. Medical Marijuana Inc. subsidiary HempMeds partnered with Sezzle, a
digital payment platform, to offer customers cutting-edge payment alterna-
Accelerating the ecommerce mar- tives. HempMeds customers can choose Sezzle at checkout to delay full pay-
ket are digital-native merchants ment for their items, at zero percent interest, the partners stated. Consumers
and renewed focus from brick-and- receive their items right away; Sezzle pays merchants upfront and assumes
mortar retailers, who are offering all repayment risk. Sezzle requires a 25 percent down payment at the time of
omnichannel experiences to secure purchase; the remaining balance is automatically scheduled as three equal-
future revenue streams, researchers installment payments to be paid every two weeks, they added.
noted.
Convenience, speed, security
drive contactless

In its second annual Eye on
Payments study, credit union ser-
vice organization PSCU reported
that about one-fourth of 1,750
respondents who participated in
its recent survey have a contactless
card and use it at least a few times
per month.

Convenience, ease/speed of use and
security are the primary motivators
given for doing so; the primary rea-
son for not using a contactless card
is lack of acceptance at stores they
frequent.

In addition, the number of con-
sumers using a contactless payment
method is expected to increase
as more merchants employ near
field communication technology to
accept tap-and-go payments, PSCU
stated. Plus, according to Visa, 95
percent of terminals shipped are
contactless-enabled and eight of the
top 10 merchants were accepting
NFC payments as of October 2019.

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