MY 100-Day English -7
Some firms will cash in (现金流入，兑现，获利) on the digital rush, while others will be left behind. Capital markets (资本市场) think a new era is dawning (展现，黎明): conventional banks now account for only 72% of the total market value of the global banking and payments industry, down from 81% at the start of the year and 96% a decade ago (see chart 1). Fintech firms such as Ant Group and PayPal make up 11%: their market value has almost doubled this year to nearly $900bn. Conventional non-bank payments firms such as Visa are booming, too, and make up the other 17% of the industry total.
Digitisation (数字化) may spell the end of the dinosaurs in some industries, such as entertainment or retail. But in finance they seem likely to live on. Banks are well entrenched (根深蒂固的), albeit (尽管，虽然) to different degrees in different places. Regulators, the gods of their ecosystem, are unwilling to let them die off. So the new and old will coexist, with the precise features of the hybrid system varying from place to place.
market capitalisation：市场总值
The acceleration in digitisation is most visible in payments. Although the crisis has led to an increase in physical cash held by the public, its pace of circulation has fallen, suggesting people are hoarding (囤积；贮藏) rather than spending banknotes (钞票；纸币). Card payments, by contrast, have kept growing. That is partly thanks to the boom in online shopping, which has itself leapt forward by several years. But it also reflects the efforts of brick-and-mortar (实体的；砖瓦加水泥) shops (实体店) to reach customers online. In the spring Stripe, a firm that powers payments, helped the centuries-old (数百年历史的) farmers’ market in Paris set up virtual checkouts in place of (代替，取代) physical ones, says John Collison, its president. Food-order volumes processed by Marqeta, a payments firm that works with many of America’s restaurant-delivery firms, tripled between March and mid-April.
Shops have reopened, but people are sticking to plastic. Governments in 31 countries have helped by raising limits on contactless (无接触的) payments (and card firms are lobbying for even higher ceilings). Those at Visa and Mastercard, two card networks that account for 94% of transactions processed outside of China, surged (激增) by over 40% in the first quarter of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019. Square, which helps small businesses accept credit-card payments, saw its share of fully cashless clients in America jump from 5% in February to 23% in April; it has since stabilised at 14%. In Britain the share now stands at 37% (see chart 3).
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