74% of Europeans will continue online shopping

Three in four European consumers (74%) say they will stick to their COVID-19 online shopping levels. This means that they will not reduce their e-commerce activities now that they can shop offline again. Therefore, it looks like the shift to e-commerce is here to stay, according to EcommerceNews Europe.

During the lockdowns of last year, 96% of consumers in Europe shopped online. That is up from 60% one year earlier. Moreover, it looks like the shift to online shopping is here to stay. This is because 74% of consumers say they have no intention to significantly reduce their online shopping now that they can access the main street shops again.

Surge in cross-border payments

The New State of Retail report from Checkout.com surveyed over 10,000 consumers and 500 online retailers. One of the key findings is that 43% of retailers said they were not prepared for last year’s surge in cross-border payments across Europe. They did not have the necessary payment methods in place to capture the demand from new markets within Europe. This resulted in lost revenue.

High demand for new payment methods

At the same time, 80% of consumers expect to pay using new payment methods such as Buy Now Pay Later, crypto, and digital wallets. In addition, 30% say they now actively want to try new payment methods based on their digital payment experiences last year. Moreover, one in eight consumers used a new digital payment method for the first time.

Localization issues

The report also takes a look at opportunities for online retailers. Laser-localized payments should lead to an optimized revenue, but there are still some localization performance pain points. For example, 74 % of online retailers do not offer all payment pages in the local language. Furthermore, two in three retailers do notoffer local payment methods in every country they serve.

In addition to that, 83% of e-commerce merchants are without direct access to a local acquirer in every key market that they operate within. Ultimately, this can negatively impact approval rates.