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Milan, April 14, 2026 – The banking sector and the credit market are undergoing a profound transformation. Mobile remains the digital channel of choice for consumers: today, 60% of banked customers use it, a figure projected to rise to 80% by 2030. At the same time,internet banking is showing signs of stabilization, leveling off at 35%, with a forecast that remains essentially stable over the next five years. This trend reflects consumers’ growing preference for mobile-first solutions, which are simpler, more immediate, and more intuitive.
In response to changing customer habits, banks are rethinking their digital offerings, increasingly shifting toward “self-banking” models. These solutions are complemented by digital branches focused on higher-value-added activities, while physical branches are being progressively redesigned to be more specialized and streamlined. In this rapidly evolving landscape, digital lending continues to grow at a rapid pace, projected to account for approximately 40% of the credit market by 2030, with an estimated value of around 60 billion euros.
These are some of the key findings from the new Digital Lending 2026 Observatory, produced in collaboration with Monitor Deloitte, Experian, and Cetif with the aim of becoming a new benchmark for insights into key industry trends, exploring growth prospects across various credit segments, key consumer characteristics, and the latest technological innovations transforming the banking sector.
Digital technology is driving growth in the credit market
In a context where the credit market is growing at a moderate pace (+5% CAGR from 2020 to 2025), the mix is becoming increasingly digital (24% in 2025 compared to 16% in 2024). The acceleration of online lending spans all credit sectors, with modest but significant growth for more complex products, such as mortgages (+19% CAGR ‘20–‘25), and much faster growth for instant solutions, such as BNPL (+71% CAGR ‘20–‘25). This segment, characterized by lower average transaction values, reflects a growing consumer preference for quick and flexible solutions, while also showing declining default rates.
Digital credit is used primarily by high-income men in Northern Italy who are part of the Millennial generation, although there are some significant differences across segments. Special-purpose credit is the product with the highest adoption rate among senior customers, while BNPL is the only product with greater prevalence in Southern Italy—where it meets a deeper demand for flexible and accessible payment solutions—and among female customers, with a strong concentration of purchases in the fashion sector, where it accounts for 76% of total transactions.
Digital technology is making inroads even into the most complex products, driven by the entry of established players
More complex products with higher average transaction values, such as mortgages, are undergoing a gradual yet significant shift toward digital channels (22% online in 2025 compared to 15% in 2024). The growing prevalence of digital channels is also drivenby the entry of incumbent operators into the sector, who are responding to evolving consumer needs with offerings increasingly oriented toward a digital-first approach, including through fully digital captive entities. At the same time, digital lending is increasingly benefitingfrom the adoption of advanced technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence, which enables more accurate predictive capabilities and an overall improvement in service levels, making processes faster, simpler, and more efficient.
“We are no longer in a phase of digital adoption, but in a structural redefinition of the credit market,” comments Marco Latif Mesak, Director at Monitor Deloitte. “By 2030 , digital lending will account for approximately 40%of total lending, with mobile as the dominant channel and about 90% of banks offering online credit and payment products .Artificial intelligence will be the true game-changer: evolving from an enabler of efficiency to a decisive tool in customers’ financial decisions , eventually becoming the primary guide for over 60% of customers by 2029, aligning with the current role of comparison sites.”
"The Observatory's data confirms what we see every day working with Italian financial institutions: digital lending is no longer an alternative channel, but the new market standard," says Giulio Mariani, Director of Data & AI at Experian Italy. "What stands out in this edition is the speed at which change has exceeded forecasts: digital penetration at 24% in 2025, six percentage points above expectations, with trajectories through 2030 that significantly reshape the competitive landscape. The data on risk profiles is equally significant: default rates in the digital channel are falling sharply and are approaching those of the physical channel, a sign that the quality of digital credit has matured thanks to the structured use of data and advanced predictive models. The contribution of Experian data to this Observatory precisely reflects the role that quality credit information must play: contributing to more accurate, faster, and more inclusive decisions with quality data that reduces uncertainty throughout the entire credit cycle."
“The path forward is now clear: an omnichannel digital presence, strong data analytics capabilities, and the adoption of artificial intelligence tools at all levels to enhance the ability to act and react. “The financial operators most skilled and effective at developing a strategy based on these pillars will certainly be more competitive and will increase their chances of success in a growing market,” says Chiara Frigerio, Secretary of Cetif and ProfessorUniversità Cattolica Università del Sacro Cuore.
AI is changing the way customers get information and access credit
The adoption of AI in digital lending processes optimizes the use of data sources in onboarding and credit scoring, improving the predictive power of models and speeding up approval and disbursement times. In fact, over the past year, time-to-yes and time-to-cash have seen a significant reduction (down 25% and 33%, respectively, when comparing Q1 ’26 to Q1 ’25). In the digital lending market,AI continues to be a true strategic enabler for banking operators, influencingthe entire lending process: from the awareness and consideration phase—where consumer preferences are increasingly shifting from traditional comparison tools to conversational AI tools capable of offering quick, personalized advice— through to the signing, disbursement, and monitoring of the loan.
The digital channel is becoming increasingly popular among affluent customers, with risk levels on the decline
The average online loan amount is generally higher than that of the physical channel (e.g., ~1.8x for personal loans), reflecting the digital channel’s ability to attract a growing share of affluent customers. Digital customers also exhibit a risk profile that is increasingly aligned with that of the physical channel, with a reduction in default rates across all segments. This trend is also supported by the adoption of AI solutions for risk assessment and monitoring, which enable more timely preventive actions.
In particular, personal loans have the highest default rate (i.e., 2.6% in 2025), while installment loansare largely in line with the levels of the physical channel (i.e., 2.1%). For mortgages, risk has decreased compared to 2020, with a gap between channels: from 1.5% to 1.2% for digital and from 1.1% to 1% for physical. As for the BNPL sector: the sector demonstrates increasingly mature risk management, both on the part of customers and operators, as evidenced by declining default rates (2% in 2025 compared to 3% in 2020), which are now increasingly aligned with those of the traditional channel.