a novel coronavirus pandemic Small and medium-sized businesses were forced to reinvent themselves to weather the crisis. According to a survey by Mastercard, the number of Brazilian companies migrating to the digital environment grew by 208% in 2020, compared to the volume of transactions in 2019.
Worldwide, listing in the online broker was three times higher than pre-pandemic levels and peaked in July 2020. According to Mastercard, the increase reflects the growing demand for a virtual sales channel, as well as the slight delay after the lockdown was adopted.
“The transition to digital has opened the door to the silver lining of the pandemic: the re-emergence of entrepreneurship and innovation,” says Bricklin Dwyer, chief economist at Mastercard. Now, he points out, it is time for “brighter opportunities” in the coming months.
With 19 economies in place, Recovery Insights: Small Business Reset reveals that sales of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) (small and medium-sized businesses) lagged behind large companies by as much as 20 percentage points at the worst moment of the pandemic.
Small business spending, however, recovered in 2021 with a 4.5% increase in sales through August 2021, a period in which e-commerce sales jumped 31.4%.
According to the study, a third more small retailers opened their doors in 2020 than in 2019, nearly 8 times more than large companies did. The trend of creating new SMEs in 2020 is mirrored worldwide, with a focus on the UK (+101%), the US (+86%), Australia (+73%), Germany (+62%), Canada (58%) and Brazil (+35%).
