Payment startups big winners of e-commerce boom

They were little known before the pandemic, but startups in the flourishing digital payment industry are now worth a fortune as Covid-19 has forced people to increasingly embrace e-commerce.

Online shopping, contactless card readers and mobile payments are nothing new, but lockdowns and fears of contagion changed consumer behaviour during the coronavirus crisis.

“2020 considerably accelerated the shift in consumer preferences to electronic payments and online shopping,” said Marc-Henri Desportes, deputy CEO of Worldline, a French payment and transactions processing firm.

A trio of startups — Stripe, SumUp and Pledg — have benefited from the shift.