Some criteria include whether the product is organic; whether the item was made or processed in Belgium to reduce its carbon footprint; or whether the item is sustainably packaged. But Färm’s product score also reflects broader considerations, with an eye on the supplier, its socioeconomic status, and relation to the community.

PayPal also expanded its business debit card into Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, and Portugal. The PayPal Business Debit Mastercard gives merchants instant access to their PayPal balances and lets them spend the funds wherever Mastercard is accepted. The card offers 1% cashback on transactions processed as credit and can be added to most mobile wallets.

By contrast, its national counterpart Raisin requires €500 ($570) and charges 0.43%, while UK-based Moneybox and Belgium-based ETFmatic have no minimum account opening and charge 0.45% and 0.48%, respectively. But Scalable grew its AUM faster than its competitors.

Trade Republic is not the only European trading app having a good year: Bux, which is available in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France, and Belgium, and UK-based Freetrade, which is planning a European expansion, recently raised $80 million and $64.1 million, respectively. And eToro went public via a $10.4 billion SPAC deal in March.

To put that in context, that estimate is more than the combined GDPs of Belgium, Sweden, and Turkey. Those are very promising figures for China, which is actively trying to lure developers to its BSN network with cheap server space, programming tools to create blockchains, and templates to standardize basic functionality, per WSJ.

Bux is currently available in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France, and Belgium and plans to use the funding to expand to Ireland in the coming weeks and eventually to the UK. Bux established itself as one of the largest neobrokers in Europe after adding features to bolster user engagement and fund transfers amid the pandemic.

In Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, for example, ownership has been above 40% since 2019, and in Denmark it reached 49.9% this year. Daily time spent with larger digital screens (desktops, laptops, and tablets) remained considerably higher than time spent with mobile devices, at an average of 3 hours, 12 minutes (3:12) and 2:10, respectively.

The scheme is scheduled to take in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland in 2021. Media Markt, Germany’s giant online electronics merchant, won friends by passing on a July 2020 national cut in sales tax to customers in full. But more crucially, the firm had already invested in major data capabilities before the pandemic.