International card scheme · Market modelling · 30 markets
Thirty payment markets, one consistent forecast - c.€1.7tn of headroom.
Thirty national markets each had a case for more spend - and projections that could not all be true at once.
30 markets rebuilt
€600bn debit pool
€360bn credit pool
Corporate strategy
C-suite
Payments
The challenge
National statistics used incompatible definitions. Some markets were saturated while others were barely banked, yet every country team could produce a persuasive investment case. The centre needed a comparable view of where to commit development resource - and where to stop.
The work
Rather than extrapolate card growth, consumer spend was split by payment value and behaviour, each band assigned a structural ceiling for card penetration. All 30 markets were then rebuilt on a consistent basis across debit, credit and commercial programmes.
The result
The model sized c.€1.7tn of ten-year headroom, and the ranking contradicted the highest-profile internal cases: the largest pools sat in everyday mid-value spend and cheque displacement. The scheme used one fact base to direct resource toward them.
One of twelve case studies in the record. The full set - corporate strategy, transactions and capital commitments - sits in the case studies index.
Engagements were won and led by Elliot Ronald and delivered by teams under his direction at Lion Strategy or its predecessor firm, Hambalt. Client confidentiality is absolute; cases are anonymised except where the work is already on the public record.