eCommerce Journal - Learning more about virtual economy - Figures

eMarketer reports the growth of e-commerce in Brazil

ayny — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:10:45 +0200

While in the developed countries e-commerce has slowed down, in the countries with a weaker economy the virtual economy only starts to develop. And theturnovers are rather impressing. Though we cannot say that Brazil is an economically weak country, its e-commerce is boosting now!

Contacless payments for sushi

ayny — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:36:07 +0200

Payments within less than half a second are now possible for the visitors of Japanese restaurant chain Wasabi which is the first restaurant chain in the UK to pilot a fully integrated contactless payment system. Previously the firm operated on a cash-only basis.

With the new technology Wasabi customers are provided with a fast and convenient ‘wave and pay’ method of payment on all transactions of £10 and under.

Expedited bill payments offered to increase revenue

ayny — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:31:37 +0200

A research conducted by TowerGroup shows that if financial institutions implement expedite payments at the expense of speeding the posting time of bill payment transactions it will create a new revenue stream for them.

According to TowerGroup there are about 24 million consumers in the US who are using online banking bill payment at the moment and the volume of online bill payments is forecasted to reach 3.87 billion transactions by 2012.

Visa revealed 12.2% increase in 2007

ayny — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:32:58 +0200

Annual commercial spending in Asia Pacific grew to an estimated US$18.9 trillion in 2007, an increase of 13 percent from $16.8 trillion in 2006, according to data from the Commercial Consumption Expenditure (CCE) index released today by Visa. Global annual commercial spending grew to an estimated $77.3 trillion in 2007, representing an increase of 12.2 percent from $68.9 trillion in 2006.

UK shoppers purchase online despite low incomes

ayny — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:08:07 +0200

The latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index shows that irrespective of the reduction in disposable income of the UK customers the funds spent online continue to grow £79 per every person in the UK.

The figured cited by British Retail Consortium reveal 0.9% decrease in high street sales in July as compared with the previous month.

Brazilian e-commerce in a full bloom

ayny — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:12:24 +0200

An income of R$3.8 billion was registered in Brazilian e-commerce in the first six months of the current year which is a 45% increase over the preceding year. Besides, e-commerce sector in Brazil showed a 42% rise in consumers up to 11.5 million. The data were cited in the 18th WebShoppers Report survey held by e-bit consultancy and by the Brazilian e-trade Chamber.

UIGEA doesn’t stop American gamblers

ayny — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:26:57 +0200

5% growth was registered in the number of visitors who visited internet gambling sites from June to July, 2008. comScore Media Metrix released a summary of July’s online traffic in the United States.

The figures show that in June 2008 12,038,000 people were unique visitors to online gambling sites which is a significantly large number taking into account that the population of the United States is 300,000,000.

41.2 million euros spent per day on plastic cards in Portugal

ayny — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:00:20 +0200

In Portugal the preferred payment option for many customers is a bank card. The increasing trend to use plastic when making payments for purchases and services was recently confirmed by the report released this week by card payment institution Unicre containing the data for the first half of this year. Credit cards were found to be most popular with an increase in their use to 9.5 percent up until June 2008.

The British spent 26.5 billion for online purchases

ayny — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:24:30 +0200

According to the recent study of uSwitch, an independent site dealing with the comparison of the prices, the volume of the retail sales in UK has dropped to the lowest mark since 1986, however the online purchases show the opposite results: during the first half of 2008 the volume of online sales have reached a record level of GBP 26.5 billion. By 2020 it is expected that estimate GBP will be 163 billion.

E-commerce in the UK disregards recession

ayny — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:36:15 +0200

While comScore’s research reports about relaxation in the US ecommerce another study held by software firm Maginus shows inverse picture in the UK. The survey advises that despite the economy slump online retail sales in the UK increased in the last year.

The research prompts that 76% of online merchants made higher sales within the last year and about 50% of them report about over 20% increase.

Juniper Research predicts mobile transactions growth

ayny — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:35:21 +0200

Mobile payments as forecasted by a research agency will be used by 2.1 billion customers to pay for digital goods downloaded to their cellular phones by 2013. Digital goods include music (ringtones and full tracks), tickets, TV, user-generated content, infotainment and games – in fact any content bought by phone and delivered to the phone.

Sales reducing in ecommerce sector

ayny — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:30:34 +0200

Ecommerce marketplace is undergoing some recession which reflects an overall weakening in the American economy. The latest report from comScore prompts that online shopping is also taking a hit from the soft economy.

After a slight rise in April 2008 online spending lowered in both May and June as it is seen from the report.

Nielsen Research: shoppers moved to e-commerce

ayny — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:24:18 +0200

A recent study from Nielsen Online shows that 80% of customers give preference to shopping online or at least exploring online store websites before they purchase some item of consumer electronics.

The motives inducing people to visit online stores are different. Some of them do it in order to avoid traveling expenses while others make visits to the websites just to save time and compare prices.

Most confident and active online shoppers. Survey

ayny — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:08:15 +0200

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.

Romanians prefer alternative payments

ayny — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:16:03 +0200

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.

M-banking is not in favor with the smallest continent

ayny — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:00:10 +0200

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.

Chinese online-shoppers spend billions online

ayny — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:12:35 +0200

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.

New Zealanders are at one with Australians

ayny — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:10:30 +0200

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.

Financial future by eyes of the Bank of Thailand

ayny — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:23:26 +0200

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.

MasterCard says: Farewell, hard notes

ayny — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:40:57 +0200

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.

Online habits in China

ayny — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:23:58 +0200

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.

Juniper Research presents a new research

ayny — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:30:33 +0200

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.

Unaware banks with unaware customers

ayny — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:48:03 +0200

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.

Fees making high jump

ayny — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:42:12 +0200

In Australia credit card fees increased 170% over the last five years with other household banking charges raised about 50% according to a study.

The fees related to the use of reward cards, the most popular form of credit among Australians jumped 40% for the five year period while standard cards fees increased 16%. As per the supposition made by the survey the total increase of fees is partially explained by customers’ shift from standard cards which had an average annual fee of $29 in 2007 to no-frill low-rate cards with an average fee of $48.

50 million cards in 2009

ayny — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:16:23 +0200

50 million credit cards of the largest lender the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China are expected to be in use by the end of the next year with 33 million being used today. On the score of growing usage of credit cards when making purchases credit card business is extending to a substantial degree.

More cash for a travel

ayny — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:25:31 +0200

British holidaymakers are going to take more cash with them while traveling abroad this year. As per reports from foreign-exchange group Travelex.co.uk Britons were taking an average of nearly £200 more with them on holiday this year against the previous year. The main impetus of the move is customers’ concern about overspending on their plastic.

Information privacy neglected

ayny — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:20:17 +0200

A recent survey by consultancy Ernst & Young show that about 65% of internal audit chiefs polled don't consider data privacy and IT fraud to be the most important issues.

Audit executives ranked corporate breaches and data-privacy regulation to be 6th in the top 10 concerns while CIOs ranked them 9th.

Latin American e-commerce "boom!"

ayny — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:25:47 +0200

Visa commissioned a study to figure out e-commerce popularity in the countries of the Latin America. As per the data gained in the course of the study held by the way by the AmericaEconomia Intelligence research over the last two years e-commerce increased 121 percent with $10.9 billion spent online by the consumers in 2007.

ID theft - your reaction?

ayny — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:53:14 +0200

ID theft is not an uncommon thing today. A special center for assistance at identity theft ITAC (Identity Theft Assistance Center) has promulgated the results of survey where they have note that the first step most consumers take upon learning, or suspecting, they are a victim is to contact their financial services company.

Discover Financial Services Reports Second Quarter Results

addy220 — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:07:35 +0200

Discover Financial Services has reported net income for the second quarter of 2008
of $234 million, or $.48 per share, as compared to $209 million, or $.44 per share, in the second quarter of 2007. Managed loans grew 2% to $47.8 billion while sales volume on Discover Cards grew 2% to $22.5 billion in the quarter.