UK Leader in Ecommerce Penetration

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The United Kingdom experienced the highest degree of ecommerce penetration in 2021, according to data from MasterCard, with the United States in the middle of the pack among 15 markets covered, and most countries seeing their peak in the early stages of the pandemic as stores locked down.

In the UK, 26.6% of its total retail sales came from ecommerce as of Sept. 1, 2021, down from 29.1% as of Jan. 1, 2021. Pre-pandemic, in January 2020, its ecommerce share was at 21.2%, according to MasterCard data. At its peak of May 1, 2020, ecommerce represented nearly a third of total retail sales in the UK.

“Our results show that the share of online transactions increased more in countries with higher pre-pandemic levels of digital maturity,” MasterCard said in its Global Outlook report. “This has further widened the digital divide across countries and highlights an economy’s digital resilience. When incomes are higher, the share of online spend is higher. This helps explain why some countries have more online share than others, while things like government spending, trade, population density also influence a country’s spending online. These factors were even more pronounced during the pandemic.”

Singapore, which saw nearly as much ecommerce penetration, saw the greatest ecommerce peak of 35.6%, as of May 1, 2020. Last fall, Singapore was at 26.6% ecommerce penetration as of Sept. 1, 2021, up slightly from 25.8% at the beginning of the year. Pre-pandemic, Singapore’s ecommerce share was 20.6%.

New Zealand was right behind the UK and Singapore in terms of the greatest peak of ecommerce penetration, at 30% as of April 1, 2020. Four months earlier, it had been 18.5%. As of last September, 20.2% of New Zealand’s retail sales were online.

In term of growth in ecommerce penetration from before the pandemic, the Czech Republic nearly doubled, from 4.9% on Jan. 1, 2020, to 9.8% on Nov. 1 of that year.

Canada, at 18.5% of ecommerce penetration as of Sept. 1, 2021, was just ahead of the U.S. at that time, which registered 15.7%, according to MasterCard data.

Germany was the only other country surveyed which saw double-digit ecommerce penetration, at a peak of 10% as of Jan. 1, 2021. Pre-pandemic, the rate was 7.2%.

Countries with the least ecommerce penetration, even throughout the pandemic to date, were the Netherlands, which peaked at 2.9% as of Sept. 1, 2021; Poland, which saw a peak of 3.3% on April 1, 2020; and the Dominican Republic, with a peak of 3.4% on May 1, 2020.