According to Groupe BPCE’s Observatoire des Paiements*, 2021 was another record year for e-commerce. This very clear trend cuts across all business sectors.
- New record for global e-commerce spending, which increased by 20% (+14% in 2020).
- A third of consumption by people under 35 is now done online
- The average shopping cart value in e-commerce is 50% more than in shops at €57 versus €38.
Some sectors are almost completely digitised: 85 to 95% in travel and plane tickets and 75% in education services. Others, which were still almost exclusively physical before the crisis, have started the shift: one in three clothing purchases is now made online, and 20% of restaurant spending compared with only 3% two years ago. The same figure applies to sports equipment. Even in the luxury and watch/jewellery sectors, the proportion has become significant: from 10% of sales online in 2019 to 16% today. The successive confinements boosted these trends, and it’s clear that online sales are here to stay regardless of the sector.
These trends will be confirmed in 2022. These figures illustrate the increasing digitisation also seen in all types of payments. The use of cash continues to decline due to the rapid growth of remote sales and the adoption of contactless products, with amounts that have practically tripled in two years.
The Payments Insight Survey will soon unveil the “2022 Trendbook”, which reveals the highly mixed impact of the last two years, affected by the COVID crisis, on French consumption.
*L’Obersvatoire des Paiements is a Payments Observatory, conducted by the BPCE Digital & Payments teams. It is based on anonymised transactions of millions of bank cards issued by the Groupe BPCE networks. It offers a statistical basis representative of the evolution of payment methods and purchasing behaviour of the French.
