The European payments market is set to expand by 7 per cent a year until 2020, according to research by Oliver Wyman. The growth is driven by increasing overall payments volumes and new types of payments, such as account-to-account (A2A).

The management consulting firm puts the European payments market revenue pools at approximately €38 billion, covering a total of €190 trillion-worth of transactions across a number of payments types. The study says the figure will grow to about €55billion by 2020.

The report included all major payments instruments and types across 28 markets in Europe, excluding remittances, wholesale and bank-to-bank transfers, and cross-border payments.

It picked out the following future trends:

1. Growth in acquiring revenues on traditional payment types may have peaked, but this is being offset by the growth in value-added services.
2. Growth in account fees
3. A2A will provide the impetus for additional revenue pools
4. Card use will continue to grow although the growth in some markets will be slowed by the adoption of A2A transactions
5. While in Italy and Iberia cash use is still expected to remain significant, electronic transactions (cards and A2A) are in the growth mode in the UK and Ireland, and in France and Benelux