Consumers as well as small and medium-sized businesses are especially feeling the effects of constraints on credit availability. Banks are still rebuilding their capital positions, and their lending will be held back by the need to work through the embedded losses in their portfolios of consumer and commercial real estate loans.
Fintechs have sparked the latest wave of innovation. In a recent survey by the European System of Central Banks, over 200 new payment solutions were reported, of which more than one-third were provided by start-ups.