Alternative online payment methods are increasingly in demand as the worldwide E-Commerce market grows. Across the globe, online retailers offer a variety of online payment methods such as bank card, direct bank transfers, E-wallets such as PayPal, cash on delivery, invoicing, and much more. When looked at individually, E-wallets make up about a third of the global market of online purchases, however this varies dramatically from region to region, especially in emerging markets such as Russia, Eastern Europe and some parts of Asia, making it important for online retailers to notice these differing preferences when considering which alternative online payment methods to make available.
In emerging markets such as Russia and the Czech Republic, cash on delivery remains King, with more than half of surveyed online consumers having selected this as their preferred option in 2016. Payment by bank card comes in as the second preferred method and only a quarter of surveyed online shoppers actually prefer E-wallets in Russia. In the Czech Republic, payments via E-wallet are the least preferred online payment method by online users. With these apparent contrasting preferences per country, offering more options than just the major ones may provide less dropped shopping carts.
To give further examples of payment method preference variation in an emerging market, in Poland the top preferred payment method is a quick transfer service such as PayU, Prezelewy24, Dotpay, which are used by about half of surveyed online shoppers, with traditional bank transfers coming in at second place. Notably, bank card payments remain towards the bottom of preferred payment methods for online consumers in Poland. In summary, these varying preferences about online payment methods show how important it is for online retailers to provide a varying mixture of online payment methods that correspond to certain local preferences.
To access further information about developments in the online payment method sector, see the full report, “Europe Online Payment Methods: Second Half 2016”.
