In 2014 Romanian e-commerce market exceeded 1 billion EUR

According to the estimations made my the main Romanian e-commerce players together with GPeC representatives, Romanian online retail exceeded 1 billion EUR in 2014, compared to approximately 600 million EUR in 2013. To be more specific, Romanian e-tail market’s value is estimated to be around 1.1 and 1.2 billion EUR for the recently ended year, this figure representing only goods sold online (independent of category), not services, utilities payments, plane tickets, event tickets, travel etc.

GPeC (eCommerce Awards Gala) is and has been for 10 years the most important e-commerce in Romania and the biggest online shops community. GPeC centralizes and published Romanian e-commerce market data and is the main source of information in this field. According to these statistics, these are the main market statistics for 2014:

According to the latest official census, Romania’s population numbers 19.7 million inhabitants, from which approximately 10 million are Internet users, internet penetration rate in Romania for 2014 being around 49.76%. From this point of view, things haven’t changed too much compared to 2013, but there are also some good news placing Romania on the first place in Europe as far as broadband download speed in concerned: 55.54 Mbps compared to Sweden (second place – 47.08 Mbps) and Netherlands (third place – 45.71 Mbps).

The number of mobile Internet connections has grown rapidly from 8.2 million in 2013 to 9.6 in June 2014, probably exceeding 10 million in December 2014.

Things haven’t changed too much as far as e-commerce demographics are concerned: the average age of Romanian online shoppers is somewhere between 25 and 35 years old and most of the online shoppers live in cities (over 80%).

There are approximately 5000 online shops in Romania, a bit over the 4500 online shops reported in 2013. Out of the total of 5000 online shops, 1173 online shops are enrolled in the 3D Secure system (source: RomCard) compared to 1000 in 2013.

Romanian e-tail market is estimated around 1.1 and 1.2 billion EUR, almost double compared to 2013 (when it was estimated to be 600 million EUR). Nevertheless, e-commerce share in total retail is still low (between 2.2 and 2.5%).

The top categories as far as online sales are concerned are still IT&C, Fashion (Clothing and Shoes) and Home&Deco. “Home&Deco is definitely a surprise considering this relatively new segment in Romanian e-commerce, growing a lot during the last 2 years”, says Andrei Radu, CEO & Founder GPeC. In 2014, Romanian people spend over 140 million EUR online in the Fashion category, according to FashionDays.ro’s estimations.

Black Friday 2014 was also a real success, the value of online shopping in Romania for Black Friday 2014 reaching 75 million EUR. Independent of the nature of goods bought, over 90% of online shoppers preffer to pay cash-on-delivery. However, online payment using cards is the preffered method when it comes to utilities payments, travel, event tickets and other online services.

The total value of card transactions in 2014 was around 337 million EUR, according to the volumes processed by the main payment processors RomCard and mobilPay(approximately 255 million EUR are processed by RomCard and approximately 82 million EUR is processed through mobilPay).

The total number of card transactions is 9,456,668 out of which 7,534,668 have been registered through RomCard and 1,922,000 have been registered through mobilPay.

According to RomCard, the highest number of online payments have been registered in December 2014, 753,038 transactions in only one month.

At the end of 2014, there were 13,666,219 cards enrolled in the 3D Secure system (information source: RomCard), a considerible growth comparing to 12 million cards in 2013. Out of the total number, 830,912 cards are active in 3D Secure, being frequently used in payments.

The average value of online card transactions is, according to Visa officials, 47 EUR for domestic purchases, while the average value of online card transactions for international purchases is 67 EUR. The average value of online card transactions is 35 EUR/transaction.

The most active day in Romania for online shopping is Wednesday.

“The numbers GPeC just published show the huge potential of the Romanian e-commerce market – one of the few national industries growing rapidly year over year. The first billion EUR has been surpassed, we are looking forward to the first 2 digit-number and we are convinced that this will happen sooner than expected considering the market’s average growth rate”, says Andrei Radu, CEO & Founder GPeC.

The information in the press release has been summed up in the attached infographic (designed by SilkWeb.ro). Both the information published and the infographic can only be used by mentioning the source GPeC and using a link to  www.gpec.ro

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GPeC is the most important e-commerce event in Romania and the biggest national online shops community. The event has more than 10 years on the market and a duration of over 8 months yearly, representing the perfect mix of conferences, workshops, expo, intensive e-commerce trainings and online shops competition aimed at educating and developing the e-commerce market in the region.

The first major GPeC event this year is  GPeC Summit which will take place in Bucharest on May 11-12-13. The first keynote speaker announced for GPeC Summit is Neil Patel, who will speak for the first time in Romania at this event. Neil Patel is the co-founder of CrazyEgg, HelloBar and KISSmetrics and has been named by Forbes magazine one of the top 10 world online marketers.

GPeC Summit tickets are available on www.gpec.ro. The price for Very Early Bird tickets is 49 EUR (VAT included) for each of the 3 event days. Hurry up and stay tuned for more world-wide-known e-commerce speakers.