The traditional retailers might not like it, but we’re increasingly becoming a nation of online shoppers. According to PayPal, a nation of extremely big spending online shoppers.
The news that we shop more online than we used to isn’t exactly news in any real sense of the word, but the figures that PayPal’s throwing around in its latest report on make for interesting reading. It’s had to adjust its forecast for quite how large the Australian online market will be by 2013; it currently believes that the market will be worth a hefty $37.7 billion by 2013, an increase over a billion dollars since the last time estimates were prepared a year ago.
We’re also all becoming a nation of smartphone shoppers; the report notes that the smartphone market accounts for 65 per cent of the Australian market, and that PayPal’s seen a rise in mobile payments up 430 per cent year on year.
One interesting quirk that I’m a little surprised that PayPal left in the research; we’re apparently a little frustrated with the lack of payment options when it comes to online shopping. Like, say, being restricted to using the not-always-popular PayPal?