What: Visa’s forecasts regarding holiday spending worldwide.

Why it is important: They have identified consumption patterns that are reassuring regarding the potential of upcoming holiday season

Visa has identified that, in most of the countries, the post-initial lockdown offline recovery is on its way, with a stronger trend in advanced economies compared to emerging market. Visa identifies this difference through 4 factors:

• Stronger government support at the customer and corporate level
• Lesser dependence on cross border and commodities businesses
• Stronger resilience of SME in developed economies
• Shorter periods of total economic immobilization than in other parts of the world (Latin America)

Having made these observations, Visa remarks that customers are adapting in 3 ways that are worth being noticed by retailers:

• There is a spending shift: outdoor activities being reduced, this translates into a spending on indoor activities (e.g. from restaurants and hotels to groceries and indoor dining)
• Working from home creates new demands in terms of equipment (including leisure)
• A spending bounce is a regular pattern in every economy having suffered a lockdown

Visa anticipates that the momentum (once again, in some countries, as, for instance, France and UK are still impacted by a lockdown) will continue during the holiday season due to these trends.

Visa Report on Global Holiday Spending