Figures

According to the study conducted by the Coremetrics consumers in Australia and New Zealand are more enthusiastic about making purchases online in comparison with shoppers in the UK, which is very advantageous for businesses as they may earn money on such a trend in customers’ behavior.

In Romania people paying for local online purchases with plastic cards make up just about 15% while the rest of online shoppers give preference to bank transfer and cash on delivery (COD). Gecad ePayment e-commerce solutions integrator conducted a corresponding study.

The study also shows that the current average value of an online purchase accounts for 92 euros, compared to 80 euros in 2007.

The recent survey has shown that the Australians are the least trustful users of mobile banking and other online services requiring the use of mobile phone different from conventional communication.

The conclusion was based on the survey conducted in 14 countries during which the customers were expressing their attitude towards mobile devices for making payments and banking. Among Europeans the most distrustful users were French and the British who were the most suspicious of the technology.

According to the latest surveys e-commerce in China is developing in a galloping pace. Only during the past 6 months it has grown by 60%.

The Data Centre of China Internet reported that the Internet users of China have spent 256.1 billion yuan (37.5 billion dollars) within a half a year, that is 58.2% more than during the same period of  2007. By making average calculations it can be seen that Chinese online-shoppers spend on the Internet 211.8 yuan each month, that is 13.9% more than they did a year before.

As it was mentioned earlier, the study conducted by MasterCard showed that Australian customers are very unlikely to carry hard notes with them for making their purchases. The same study held in New Zealand reveals that customers here are also more reluctant to carry cash than they were five years ago and give preference to paying for an item with plastic cards.

The Bank of Thailand ''BoT'' expects electronic payment services to gain high popularity with plastic cards set to play an active role in place of cash in the next 4-5 years. The supposition is based upon the fact that a group of service providers, including both commercial banks and non-bank institutions, are rivaling to provide a variety of new services to meet consumer needs.

A study conducted by MasterCard Worldwide shows that Australian customers are most unlikely to use hard cash feeling uncomfortable carrying big portions of paper notes in their wallets.

New technologies such as contactless payments were found to be more popular with Australians as reported by the survey from MasterCard.

A recent report made by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals that Chinese internet users spend about 570 million hours online per day which means that the country has an immense potential for e-commerce.

The figure was determined by the BCG due to the assumption that last year 210 million and more internet subscribers were surfing the Web averagely for 2.7 hours a day.

The recent report of Juniper Research has showed that in 2013 the e-market can expect a rise in Africa & Middle East region to more than $107 billion of revenues. According to the research this rise will be pre-conditioned with the growth of mobile service. But at the same time Juniper Research notes that regional operator-billed voice revenues will probably peak in 2011 and then go down in view of the competitive pricing in that sector.

Recent survey conducted on online scams showed that over a 12 month period more that 25% of banks in the Asia-Pacific region ran across numerous attacks aimed to elicit financial information online.

However the existence of the fraud risk is not a sole problem so far. Ignorance of the security importance adds to the juncture. 75% of the polled confessed their being unaware of the impact of cyber security on their operations.