The Netherlands Overtakes Spain In Mobile Wallet Usage

New PYMNTS data shows that mobile wallet usage in the Netherlands has pulled ahead of Spain.

According to the latest Connected Economy report, “ How The World Does Digital: Different Paths To Digital Transformation ,” a PYMNTS and Stripe collaboration, 13.6% of Dutch consumers paid for their most recent in-store purchase with a mobile payment in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022.

Although that marks a slight dip since Q2, when 13.8% reported the same, it is still an improvement on the first quarter when just 11.3% did.

In Spain, on the other hand, having started the year ahead of the Netherlands at 11.8%, by Q2 the country had lost its lead and the two EU nations were even. In fact, in Q3, Spain fell behind , to just 12.7% of consumers reporting that they used a mobile wallet for their last in-store transaction.

A similar pattern is seen for online transactions. The Netherlands started the year with 19.2% of consumers reporting using a digital wallet for their last eCommerce payment, compared to Spain’s 29.3%.

But after successive quarter-on-quarter declines in usage in Spain and a steady growth in the Netherlands, by Q3 the tables had turned, with the latter steaming ahead to 26.4% compared to Spain’s 24.4%.

In fact, alongside Australia and Japan, the Netherlands was one of only three countries of the 11 measured that bucked the global trend of declining online digital wallet usage and saw an increase each quarter. Across the whole sample, this fell from 31.3% to 31.0% to 30.7% in the first three quarters of the year.

Overall, in Q3, the Netherlands was in the middle of the EU pack when it comes to mobile wallet usage, with Italy and Germany showing a higher preference for the payment method. At the same time, Spain and France fell to the back for in-store purchases. A similar pattern can be observed for online purchases, the only difference being that Spain and France came in joint last position.

Card vs Non-Card Mobile Wallets

The rising adoption of mobile wallets in the Netherlands generally reflects an inclination toward non-cash payment methods. For example, a recent study by the European Central Bank (ECB) finds that only Finland has lower cash usage at the point of sale (POS) than the Netherlands at 19% and 21% respectively.

That study reports that in 2022, 67% of POS payments were made with a card.

Unlike PYMNTS’ data, however, the ECB does not distinguish between card payments made using a physical card and those made using a mobile device.

As such, it reports that just 10% of Dutch payments in 2022 were made using a mobile app as it only counts wallets that enable account-to-account transactions . For non-card mobile payments, adoption in the Netherlands ranks the highest in the Eurozone.

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