Spending recovery driven by home care and digital, says Revolut

Mon, 07 Sep, 2020 - 00:00

Evelyn Ring

Day-to-day spending by users of the Revolut digital bank in Ireland climbed back up to 2019 levels last month, it has emerged.

The spending recovery is being driven by digital goods and by home care as the people adjust to spending more time at home because of Covid-19.

Spending in the hospitality sector is still considerably behind last year, but showed the first signs of recovery last month.

Overall spending by Revolut users in Ireland in August was up by 4% compared to the same month last year.

A monthly analysis of high-frequency spending by Revolut, which has over 1m customers in Ireland, shows that the spending growth is being primarily driven by the move to people working and entertaining themselves at home.

Growth in digital goods — from games and apps to movies and books — has been “explosive,” according to the report. Spending on digital content is up 155% year-on-year — up 152% on apps and up 140% on games.

Homecare spending has also soared year-on-year — in hardware stores (+91%), garden centres (+102%), furniture stores (+60%), and appliance shops (+12%).

Spending on pets began to soar after public health restrictions were imposed in March, and is now 92% above the same time last year.

Expenditure on golf courses was up 85% as more people realised it was a great sport for social distancing.

The hospitality industry started to show the “first tentative signs” of recovery last month, compared to July. Spending in restaurants was up 19%, and it was up by 37% in hotels that benefited from the significant increase in staycations.

However, compared to August 2019, spending in restaurants is down by a third and has fallen by 12% in hotels. Year-on-year taxi spending was down by 48%.

Stress of pandemic could lead to employee burnout especially among women