Retail ecommerce sales in Western Europe rose by 26.3% in 2020, to €481.54 billion ($539.18 billion). The pandemic is fueling other shifts in the retail landscape, too, such as a greater focus on buying local.

We predict reasonable Snapchat user growth of 6.8% in Western Europe this year, resulting in 76.2 million new users on the platform, or nearly 22% of internet users. However, this growth is up only slightly from our November 2019 prediction of 6.3%.

The number of monthly Instagram users in Western Europe will rise by 17.0% in 2020 to 132.8 million. That’s more than three times higher than the growth rate we had predicted before the pandemic (5.2%) and equates to 19.3 million new users from 2019.

Western Europe showed a strong increase in SVOD platform adoption in recent years, a trend that is driven by US players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, as well as newer streaming services and local players entering the market. The streaming wars are about to hit Western Europe, driving exponential growth in both subscription OTT and Netflix adoption.

Western Europe—particularly the EU-4—has always been a strong cash culture, and concerns about security have inhibited growth of mobile payments in the region. However, that’s gradually changing in large part because of the pandemic, as more consumers use cashless forms of payment to help curb the spread of the virus.