E-commerce keeps growing: 42% more transactions in 2008

Ogone, one of the leading European Online Payment Service Providers, has announced its financial results for 2008. And considering that the company's Belgian customers represent no less than 85% of the Belgian e-commerce market, one may consider these results as representative.

In 2008, 6.4 million transactions have been completed via Ogone, which represents an increase of 42% compared with 2007 (4.5 million payments). Those payments represented 590 million euros, which corresponds to a growth of 28% compared with 2007 (460 million euros).

That does indeed mean that the average amount per transaction has dropped: from 102 euros in 2007 to 92 euros in 2008. In other words, the Belgians purchase more, but spend less money. Besides, on the Internet, the range of goods and services has become more and more diversified, which also led to a larger amount of more inexpensive things. Where before one bought e.g. concert tickets, Internet will soon also be the place to be to purchase movie and amusement park tickets.

According to the results provided by Ogone, the e-commerce sector is not very affected by the financial crisis. In spite of the unfavourable economic situation, the general growth has indeed not dropped during the last quarter of 2008 and the number of customers who made use of Ogone also kept growing, with 80 new users every day. So, we can tentatively assume that the crisis would even have a positive influence on e-commerce: users go in search of less expensive products and find them on online shops, where they also avoid impulse buying.

Pierre Willaert, Country Manager Belgium at Ogone, is convinced that an increasing amount of money will be invested online: « Not only the existing web stores will see their sales increase, but an increasing amount of retailers will also boost the sales of their “real” stores by launching online shops ».