Prepaid card market in France expected to reach US$ 42.7 billion by 2023

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According to PayNXT360, France prepaid card market is expected to record a CAGR of 7.8%, from 2019-2023, to reach US$ 42,697.3 million in terms of transaction value by 2023. During the review period, the transaction value increased from US$ 18,425.7 million in 2014 to US$ 28,748.5 million in 2018, posting CAGR of 11.8%. In 2018, the market registered a growth rate of 10.8%, and is expected to grow at 9.9% in 2019.

Overall, adoption has been increasing across both corporate and retail consumers. The payroll category has also grown steadily over the last eight quarters, driven by increased sales to small and mid-tier businesses. Unbanked populations of which most are immigrants are the emerging as key market for prepaid cards.

Prepaid incentive and loyalty cards are used as a promotional tool by stores and businesses to maintain customer loyalty with the store and keep them coming back. Many stores in France use the prepaid cards / gift cards as a source of incentives to their customers. There are possibilities of market expansion for prepaid cards in other areas of applications such as payrolls, paying office expenses, gift cards, transportation, paying utility bills and for e-commerce.

The French gift card market in terms of transaction value is expected to record a CAGR of 3.9% during 2019-2023 to reach US$ 7,863.6 million by 2023, increasing from US$ 6,738.4 million in 2019.

Reloadable prepaid cards are most popular form of prepaid cards in France. However, after growing incidences of fraud, money laundering, and role of prepaid cards in funding terror operations, French government has implemented stringent KYC. These prepaid card users must be registered to verified individuals and there are balance limits of EUR 10 thousand at any time.

French payment industry is modernizing and continued expansion of prepaid card market in domestic market is inviting more and more business ventures to prepaid card and other online payment system markets.

PSD2 (Revised Payment Services Directive) will bring revolutionary change the way banking system in Europe behaves. The new directive will allow third party providers such as Facebook or Google to manage finances. This is going to enable third party companies to build financial services upon bank’s data and infrastructure. Many online and mobile based applications are enabling easier way to make transactions faster and bringing more sophisticated payment instruments to France.

The drive for financial inclusion for people from informal economy is the latest global trend and France too believes in adding more and more people to formal economy which will be beneficial for country’s improved economic state and business environment.

The new generation payment methods such as Peer to Peer Payments will enable online banking and digital payments for unbanked and especially migrants who do not have conventional bank accounts. They can avail facilities such as ATM withdrawals, online shopping and paying bills through mobile based virtual prepaid cards or QR code based mobile banking.

To know more and gain deeper understanding of changing prepaid card market dynamics in France, click here.