Despite a slow slower economy, eCommerce sales in Europe grew by 12% from ‘09 to ’10. Online retail sales in Europe reached EUR 81.2 billion in 2010 and are projected to grow to EUR space 133.6 billion by 2015. 136 million European adults (37%) shopped regularly online, and spent on European spent an average EUR 942 online during 2009, rising increasing to EUR 1086 in 2014 (Forrester) As eCommerce expends in Europe, it is also becoming more sophisticated and yet more complex and competitive.
Mobile devices and social media are among key drivers behind online retail growth. This trend is expected to continue due to growing number of Internet users purchasing products via their mobile phones.
According to the EU Commission‘s paper ''Digital Agenda'' there are 3 key barriers for online shopping in Europe: Confidence, Privacy and Trust.
Current mix of online payment, e-identity and trust are often contradicting with merchants' business goals and effort to minimize and effectively manage risk at a distance.
The shift of card fraud risk into CNP environment, accompanied along with an increase in chargeback costs and imperfection of alternative payment mechanism, have raised new challenges for the entire online payment ecosystem.
In the time of economic recession and cloud computing, merchants and payment card companies are carefully considering further investments into security compliance (e.g. PCI DSS). Cloud computing can save money, but proper implementation may come into a question. Banks driven innovations (backed supported by online banking and ACH networks) are struggling to keep-up with nonbanks (wallets) to create the next generation of cross border online payments, which are less sensitive to fraud and leading lead to a more improved sales conversion. Europeans continued continue to spend significant time on social networking sites. Facebook hit 750m members worldwide and 50% of active users log into Facebook each day (Facebook). Social commerce has a huge vast potential and retailers are now exploring the opportunity to reach new audience. Online Merchants are increasingly adapting the multichannel approach seeking new ways to engage and interact with customers.
Improved customer payment experience in multichannel retailing, with multiplicity of devices (PC, laptop, mobile, tablet, TV) is leading to more transactions and alternative payment methods for new channels will emerge to complement card usage.