Belgians spent €2.73 billion online in first quarter

During the first three months of this year, 7.4 million Belgians made 23 million purchases online. While doing this, they spent 2.73 billion euros, which is an increase of 12 percent compared to the same period last year.

This is evident from Belgian ecommerce association BeCommerce, which publishes the Market Monitor regularly. This research shows that not only the amount of money that’s spent online has increased, but so did the number of online buyers (+3 percent) and the number of expenses (+7 percent).

According to managing director Sofie Geeroms these results show that Belgian consumers are getting more and more comfortable with shopping online. “The importance of ecommerce keeps increasing and this industry already accounts for about 18 percent of the total retail industry”, she commented.

Belgian consumers especially shop online because of the convenience, lower prices and the fact it costs them less time than shopping at physical stores. Disadvantages of online shopping are the shipping costs and the fact consumers can’t feel or try the products. Paying in advance is also seen as a disadvantage, and the same goes for long shipping times.

Bancontact is most popular online payment method in Belgium

Whenever Belgian consumers need to pay for their products or services online, they like to use Bancontact for this. The credit card was the most popular online method in Belgium during the first quarter of last year (49 percent), but since then Bancontact is more popular (51 percent). PayPal is being used by 28 percent of online shoppers in Belgium.

Online shopping in Belgium still happens a lot on a desktop (28 percent), but tablet (11 percent) and smartphone (11 percent) are seeing increased usages among shoppers.