Europe spends online

In Hungary, the share of online credit card payments increased by 60% in one year, 84% of Romanian internet users also shop online, and the Czech Republic already offers 21 webshops for online shopping. PayU, one of the region’s leading online payment providers, examined online shopping trends in its key markets.

Veterans and army drivers
The unusual market landscape shows that our eastern neighbor is far ahead of other countries in the region in terms of the spread of online credit card payments. In Romania, it has been possible to pay online since the mid-28s, and today 3% of the population regularly uses this method. In terms of online payment, Poland is similarly an old biker, with 21 online transactions per second. PayU has been present in the two countries for eight years, and is now a leader in the online payment market in both states. Already 8% of Ukrainian online shoppers who join the service provider trust this payment method. However, there are also newly entering Turks, only 10% of whom pay online with a credit card. Compared to them, we Hungarians are in a better position, as the number of net citizens who pay for their online purchases is around 60%. According to MNB statistics, this represents a 2% increase in the number of online payment transactions over the past XNUMX years.

To bet, place, gas bill
However, there is an area where we Hungarians choose the online bank card method in a higher proportion than any other payment option: at home, if we buy a ticket for an event, we pay 90% this way. But this method of bill settlement is also popular when buying electronic and cultural products. Where users in each country prefer to pay with an online debit card shows an interesting difference: Czechs are happy to run their sports bets this way, and they also pay for various online content in this way. Russians, like Czech users, but unlike other countries, are particularly keen to use their credit cards online when they contain content, e.g. they buy music or movies online. Romania is also ahead of other countries in the region in this respect: unlike other countries, most of them pay utility bills using this payment method.

Practice makes
If we compare PayU countries in terms of the prevalence of Internet use, Romania is exceptionally not at the forefront. Like Hungary, it has an internet penetration of 35%, but while we have about 1,2 million people who like to shop online, the proportion of Romanian internet users is much higher than in all other countries, 84%. 59% of the Polish population use the Internet regularly, and 68% of netizens also use the Internet for shopping. Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that we can talk about the largest e-commerce market in the region. However, the Czech Republic offers the most online shopping opportunities to its netizens: 21 webshops, unique in the region, try to serve online shoppers. Our Turkish peers are also distrustful in this regard: despite the fact that almost half of the population is online, barely 000% of them shop online.

So it seems that the prevalence of internet use and trust in e-commerce are not necessarily linked. However, the more routine residents of a country in the region gain in online shopping, the more they will trust online payment solutions.

Source: Press release