£3,170 was spent every second with Visa at UK-based merchants in the year to August 2013 as E-commerce ‘continues to boom.‘
Total annual online spend with Visa at UK merchants has doubled in four years: in 2009 £50.2bn was spent online with UK merchants, compared with a £52bn total that was surpassed in the first six months alone in 2013.
Visa say that UK consumers are leading the world when it comes to online spend and proclaimed that E-commerce is exploding, with UK merchants attracting spend from well beyond the country‘s borders.
Almost a fifth of e-commerce spend from outside the UK and International spend with Visa at UK merchants totalled £16bn, with £7bn of that spend from outside Europe. The top five international spenders were: the USA at number one, Italy at number two, and France, Japan and Germany at three, four and five respectively.
Marc O‘Brien, Managing Director at Visa UK said: “In just four years we have seen online spending at UK clothing merchants with Visa nearly double in growth from £1 in £7 in 2009, to £1 in £4 in 2013. In fact, online spending with Visa is now at an unprecedented scale across all sectors including airlines, supermarkets and services, indicative of the ever increasing preference to make purchases online, largely fuelled by the explosion in smartphones and tablets.
A recent report by Ofcom stated that internet shopping is now more popular in the UK than any other major country, as consumers in the UK spend an average of £1,083 a year on internet shopping compared to just £842 in Australia (the second highest country studied).
Jonathan Wall, e-Commerce Director at multi-brand digital firm Shop Direct declared that 80 per cent of its sales are now online and is increasingly seeing traffic from mobile users.
“It‘s crucial that we‘re on the front-foot with providing the best online shopping experience, from spotting that must-have item to making the purchase. Innovation is key to this and through our partnership with Visa, our online shoppers have peace of mind knowing that their payments are safe and secure.”
