Cashback suspended pending changes and the Nexi stock fell on the stock market by 2.77% to € 18.27, the worst performance on the Milanese market. The state cashback program, which offers a refund of up to 150 euros in 6 months to those who make digital payments plus a bonus of 1500 euros to those who have made the most purchases, will be suspended for at least 6 months at the end of the first semester of activity.
This is the decision reached by the Government Control Room: on June 30, at the end of the first of the three semesters foreseen, the program will be interrupted. “The suspension of cashback is a mistake, I said it and repeated it yesterday in the control room. I hope we can go back on this decision”, Stefano Patuanelli, Minister of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, said today on the sidelines of the Council European Union in Luxembourg.
Conversely, Codacons applauds that cashback has never fully convinced consumers. “Today only 14.8% of citizens, about 8.9 million people, have joined the program that provides for the reimbursement of expenses made with electronic payments”, explained Codacons. “At the basis of the limited success of the measure, a too cumbersome procedure and technical problems which, especially on the occasion of the extra cashback at Christmas, have discouraged consumers”. Now Codacons expects interventions from the Draghi government to effectively combat tax evasion and to encourage the use of electronic payments by eliminating costs and commissions for merchants and consumers, and heavily sanctioning those who do not allow users to pay with credit cards and debit cards. .
The funds allocated for cashback were 1.75 billion for the period from December 2020 to December 2021 and 3 billion for 2022. According to some sources, the 6-month suspension was necessary to review the mechanisms and make it restart more equitably . In fact, unlike the foreign examples, which concentrate premiums on transactions relating to the sectors most at risk of evasion, the Italian model made no distinctions, thus impacting on the relationship between costs and benefits of the measure.
All this will probably be reviewed in the coming months with new legislation that could enter the budget law. No problem, however, for the first semester that ends on June 30: the prizes acquired will be paid regularly. To date, 8.9 million Italians have signed up for cashback and 7.9 million have valid transactions, of which around 6 million people have made a minimum of 50 operations to get state cashback.
Equita Sim believes that the news is qualitatively negative for Nexi and the digital payments sector even if the quantitative impact, according to Sim, will be very limited (less than 1% of revenues) on this year. For another analyst, the impact for Nexi should also be marginal. According to the company’s management, in the first quarter of this year the program is expected to have generated around 1-2 million euros.
The continuation of the program in 2022, even with revised mechanisms and a reduced budget, could, however, be positive for the definitive adoption of digital payments by some consumers. Equita reaffirmed the buy rating and the target price of 19 euros on the Nexi stock which trades at a 2022-2023 price / profit multiple of 29-24 times, within the historical range of 18-36 times. (All rights reserved)

Previous articleStresa, Lake Maggiore: what to see, where to eat and what to do in the evening
Next articleUrinary Vanilmandelic Acid: high, low, what it is, diet, urinalysis