Most people in big cities are shopping online: Visa

MUMBAI: There's no stopping the e-commerce juggernaut. Six mega cities and 11 tier-2 cities, which account for more than half the wealth of the country, have seen nearly 92% of their people shop online, ranging from movie tickets to perfumes, suggests a study by Visa, a payment service provider.

“E-commerce has contributed to electronification in a big way, and that is what the survey findings show — it allows people to embrace digital and electronic payments at a faster pace,” TR Ramachandran, group country manager, India & South Asia, Visa, told ET.

“Given the explosion of smartphones in India, the mobile is now the first screen, which was earlier the third screen after PC/ laptop and tablet,” he said.

“What networks, banks, acquirers and merchants do to enable these transactions is an interesting journey to witness in the next three-five years.”

The survey reveals that of the top three payment modes — debit or credit card, cash on delivery, and direct debit or fund transfer — about 74% of the people prefer to pay with their debit/credit card for online transactions.

Interestingly, the average time spent online by Indian users is five hours daily, which is higher than the Asia-Pacific average of 4.5 hours. About 66% of those polled said they browsed shopping websites YEP, Flipkart or Amazon using their mobile devices, and 46% made purchases.

“After the secondary factor authentication, more customers are now comfortable using their plastic (cards) for online transactions,” said Ramachandran, adding that Visa, too, has experienced consistent growth of e-commerce usage. “Visa India spend data showed 43% growth in e-commerce payment volume in 2014. It also reflects a 53% growth in the number of e-commerce transactions.”

Spend data is the value of transaction using Visa cards.