As the spring season blossoms, there are more signs that the economy — and with it, the payments ecosystem — is gaining greater traction.

Countries around the world are accelerating their vaccine rollouts, with the United Kingdom and the United States leading the way among large nations. With greater vaccination rates, more businesses are reopening, more people are booking travel, and in-person sporting events are resuming. Oliver Wyman is surveying consumers in 10 countries to track their attitudes and future plans, and the data are clear: Improvements in public health drive greater consumer confidence and greater spending. In this issue of Payments Plus we share some of the survey results, with much more detail available on our website.

We are also seeing greater confidence among investors. Through our work with private equity firms, we have had the opportunity to deeply explore many payment subsectors, including business-to-business payments, cross-border payments, early wage access, payments fraud, and prepaid products. In every case, the market is robust and growing, supported by macroeconomic tailwinds.

Yet the rebound in payments activity isn’t uniform. Card-not-present spending is far outpacing card-present purchases, and debit transactions are outpacing credit card spending. In fact, for the first time, total purchase volume of debit cards exceeded that of credit cards in the United States.

In this edition of Payments Plus, we profile a selection of our client work around the world. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Payments Plus is a regular update from Oliver Wyman where we share a sample of perspectives drawn from client work across the payments industry. Contact us at payments@oliverwyman.com

This publication was created with contributions from our global Payments team.