Belgium bank Belfius dives into ecommerce

Belfius, one of Belgium’s largest banks, wants to further promote the local ecommerce industry and thus has collaborated with seven partners, so entrepreneurs can start an online store more easily. A noble pursuit, as 42% of the money Belgian consumers spent online went to outlandish ecommerce sites.

Consumers in Belgium spent 5.6 billion euros online last year. This is an increase of 15% compared to what they spent in 2013. But 42% of that money didn’t go to Belgian online retailers, it went to ecommerce sites abroad. A reasonably explanation for this would be that Belgian online stores don’t fulfill all the needs of consumers. It looks like ecommerce sites abroad have a bigger offering, better prices or even a better service.

Start, manage and promote an online store
Belfius wants to change all this and has announced it will collaborate with seven different companies so it could offer its customers the opportunity to start, manage and promote an online store. “Belgians have clearly discovered their way to the worldwide web, to search for information, compare products and eventually buy them as well. But a considerably share of these online orders take place on big foreign websites”, the bank says. “If you compare it with our neighbors Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands – who together account for 72% of total online sales in the European Union – our ecommerce companies still have a lot of conquering to do in the market.”

That’s where Belfius wants to come in. Together with seven companies who are able to help entrepreneurs with setting up an online store, running the ecommerce site and promoting the shop.

Belfius’ seven partners
Interactive marketing agency CAP47 will help consumers of Belfius with the preparations for starting a shop, as well as promoting it once it’s up and running. Zibbra can deliver a fully tailored online store and offers marketing services as well. Dutch ecommerce software provider SEOshop offers software which entrepreneurs can use to build a complete online store. EasyOrders offers a service that enables retailers to have a mobile personalized order app, so customers can order and pay with their mobile phone or tablet. Belfius also works closely with three different payment service providers. These are HiPay Wallet, Ingenico Payments Service and Mollie.