Are we heading towards a horribilised summer or will the choice of a large majority of French people to stay in France save the season? A young British start-up, SumUp, specializing in payment solutions for VSEs and SMEs, scrutinized the spending by bank card of its customers during the month of July. Amounts, category and place of purchase… A total of 100,000 transactions - from 80,000 bank cards - carried out through its payment terminals were scrutinized.
Without assuming the summer 2020 balance sheet, it offers a photograph of purchases made in July through the prism of its own users, "autoentrepreneurs, taxi drivers, small traders, greengrocers, market gardeners, markets and many coffee shops. », Explains Laure Faretti, the development manager in France. 250,000 professionals attracted by SumUp's discount offer based on the purchase (and not the rental) of the electronic payment terminal (EPT) and a fixed commission.
The study shows “an increase in the volume of our transactions throughout France, which is reflected in greater use of bank cards to the detriment of cash,” she underlines. Contactless payment has also become commonplace with the raising of the ceiling to 50 euros since 65% of our transactions are made without contact against 38% in July 2019 ”.
Lower average baskets
The most dynamic regions, those where we spend the most during the summer, remain unchanged. We find the same top three as last year: Corsica, Occitania and Brittany, but their average basket is decreasing. It reaches 57 euros for Corsica, 33 euros for Occitania and 32 euros for Brittany, it's a few euros lower (2 euros to 4 euros depending on the region) compared to those of July 2019 ...
At the back of the pack, we find the Hauts-de-France, Grand-Est and Pays de la Loire region with average baskets around 30 euros, again slightly down compared to July 2019. “It is linked to the drop in the consumption of holidaymakers and the number of foreign tourists, ”said the professional, who noted a drop in the volume of transactions carried out by foreign bank cards.
At the national level, the average basket drops below 35 euros for French customers, against 49 euros for holders of foreign cards, "always more spendthrift than nationals, notes Laure Faretti, even if usually their average basket is much higher until reaching 62 euros in July 2019 ”. These first figures could well be a bad omen for traders, "already faced with an unfortunate mix between the fall in the number of tourists and that of their spending", she concludes.
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Especially since this pulse is in line with the latest figures published at the end of July by the barometer of Atout France, the tourist development agency of France. “The desire to rediscover France is growing for domestic customers. 7 out of 10 French people wish to visit France this summer ", indicates the study, noting that among Europeans," the Belgians, the Swiss and the Dutch are progressing strongly in their intentions to come to France ".