Italy

Italian e-commerce

With 61 million inhabitants, Italy is the fifth largest e-commerce market in Europe. In 2017, Italians spent 469$ US per capita online and 11,958$ US per capita at brick-and-mortar shops. The Italian e-commerce market is expected to grow by a 12% CAGR in the next seven years. About one fifth of Italian consumers use mobile phones or tablets to shop. M-commerce is expected to at least double in growth in the next few years.

Charge cards as the preferred payment method

The most important methods of payment in Italy are card payments. Following cards, e-wallets are the second most common method of payment, as Italians used mobile wallets to pay for 31% of their e-commerce transactions and 2% of their POS transactions in 2017. The most popular e-wallet in Italy is PayPal. Other popular methods of payment include MonetaOnline, Voucher ePay and Transferimento Bancario/Bonificio. Interestingly, the average amount of cards transaction decreased, even though the number of transactions and total amount spent increased. This indicate that Italians are gradually adopting the use of cards for smaller daily purchases. Contactless payment also became more widely accepted in recent years.

Recent measures taken by the European Union indicate a decline in cash payments. In 2016, the European Central Bank ceased to produce the 500 euro banknote. The same year, the validity period of cheques was reduced to six months instead of a year.

Consumers shopping habits

In the last year, nearly half of Italian online shoppers were aged between 35 and 54 years old, indicating a strong cross-generational interest for e-commerce. Same-day delivery appeal strongly to Italian customers. Italy as a rather low internet penetration rate (64%) in comparison to other European countries.

Cross-border commerce

Approximately 30% of the Italian population buy products from foreign websites, mostly from the UK and Germany. Furthermore, over 4 million Italians buy on US websites and nearly 3 million from China. Italy is not a big exporter. Only one in four merchants sell their goods abroad. The most popular trade partners in export are Germany, Spain and Great Britain.

Popular payment providers in Italy

In addition to the internationally known payment provider Adyen, other popular payment service providers in Italy are BNl POSitivity, CartaSi, ConsorzioTriveneto, Digital River, Dovetail, GlobalCollect, MonetaWeb MonetaWeb, Paymill, PayPal Pro, Phoenix Informatica Bancaria Spa, SIA Group and Wirecard.

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