NETFLIX IS AHEAD OF ONEPLAY, AT LEAST WHEN IT COMES TO PAYING FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS BY CARD

Almost immediately following last year’s merger of the Voyo video-on-demand service and the O2 TV internet television service, their successor, Oneplay, became the largest streaming service in the Czech Republic overnight, surpassing even Netflix – the previous market leader – in terms of subscriber numbers. However, even a year and a half after its launch, Oneplay still lags behind Netflix in one respect: paying for a subscription by card.

Oneplay can be paid for using either a credit or debit card, a digital wallet such as Google Pay or Apple Pay, or a code from a gift voucher, which can be purchased in supermarkets or newsagents. However, according to data from the fintech platform Tapix, which analysed the subscription market in Central Europe, Oneplay users are not particularly trusting when it comes to entrusting their credit card details to this streaming service. Netflix clearly leads in terms of the number of monthly transactions, accounting for 8.8 per cent of card transactions made with leading retailers in the Czech Republic, whilst Oneplay accounts for half that figure, at just 4.2 per cent. However, it still performs better than another streaming service, Disney, which accounts for two per cent of monthly card transactions.

A tenth of the volume of card payments goes to Netflix

Netflix ranks third among all services in the Czech Republic in terms of the number of monthly card transactions, with Apple in first place (29.3 per cent of transactions) and Google Play in second (13 per cent). In terms of the value of card payments, Netflix ranks second in the Czech Republic, with a share of 10.3 per cent. By contrast, Oneplay is down in eighth place with a share of 3.9 per cent. Apple leads the way once again with a share of 17.7 per cent. A large proportion of both the number of transactions and their total value is accounted for by subscriptions to digital services, whether these are video or audio streaming platforms. According to Tapix data, around 40 per cent of customers pay for at least one active subscription. One in four users even has two or more at the same time. Overall, the average customer spends nearly 12,000 korunas a year on these services, which accounts for almost six per cent of all their card transactions.

Compared with the rest of Central Europe, Czechs spend roughly 40 per cent less. The average price of a single subscription is also lower, amounting to around 345 koruna in the Czech Republic, whilst in Central Europe it stands at around 405 koruna. It is worth noting that the basic Oneplay subscription alone costs 199 koruna a month (excluding sports channels), Netflix costs 259 koruna a month and Disney costs 219 koruna a month.“Subscriptions have become a new component of our daily expenditure. The problem is that the money is debited from the account automatically, which makes these payments invisible to many people, so they easily lose track of how much they’re actually paying each month,” says Ivan Dovica, co-founder and co-CEO of the fintech company Dateio. “That is precisely why there is a growing need for banks to categorise these transactions clearly and display them in a way that people can easily understand within their apps,” he adds.

Czechs spend a third of their money on digital service subscriptions

The breakdown of expenditure shows that more than half of all subscription payments go towards digital services such as software and data storage. Another third is spent on leisure, which includes music and film streaming. People most frequently pay for services from Apple, Google Play, Netflix and Spotify. The Czech platform Oneplay ranks fifth in terms of the number of transactions, leaving even global players such as Disney and PlayStation behind. According to the fintech firm Tapix, which conducted the research, it is difficult to identify within a banking app whether a specific payment actually corresponds to a subscription. This is because a single merchant often operates under dozens of different pricing schemes. Banks must therefore precisely match the specific amount, frequency and method of payment.

“For non-bank clients, subscriptions account for up to half of all card transactions; for traditional banks, the figure is around one-tenth. For financial institutions, clear management of these expenses is becoming an essential standard, without which they will not succeed with younger customers. In future, it will therefore become increasingly important for banking apps to be able to handle recurring payments just as clearly as regular transactions, and to help people better understand where their money is going each month,” adds Dovica. It is precisely this categorisation of payments and the processing of the resulting data that the Czech fintech company Dateio – the firm behind the Dateio Platform and Tapix – specialises in. The latter specialises in helping banks understand payment data, enabling them to analyse it in detail and build their own features and solutions based on it.

Source: televizniweb.mediar.cz