Even small businesses are converting to digital payments

In Italy, the diffusion of digital payments has grown a lot in recent years, but it still remains significantly lower than in other European countries.

One of the reasons often cited for this delay in digitization concerns the specific of the Italian productive and commerce fabric, characterized by a large number of small or very small businesses.

According to a study carried out by the Visa Observatory together with Ipsos, the panorama is destined to change within a few years.

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The advantages of this solution for businesses include an increase in turnover (26 %), faster payment crediting (24%), protection against fraud or robbery (21%) and the possibility of offering a friendlier service especially for foreign customers (21%).

Change drivers

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The change in habits has led to the increase in contactless payments even with the traditional card.

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According to the SMEs interviewed, some advances technologies could facilitate the diffusion of digital payments by improving the customer experience: in particular, Tap To Phone systems (for receiving payments directly via smartphone) were found to be interesting for 73% of companies that do not yet offer a digital payment solution .

The difficulties encountered relate primarily to problems of a technological nature (60%) and only secondly to service costs (36%).

Among the vendors, the degree of knowledge of cryptocurrencies (89% of respondents); 3 in 10 even believe these tools will make their way as a payment method.