According to GlobalData’s ecommerce analytics, ecommerce sales in China are expected to register a growth of 17.2% in 2021, as consumers increasingly shift from offline to online due the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a slump in the overall consumer spending, it has resulted in the growth of e-commerce purchases, there by further widening the gap between the online and offline shopping.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, while the total retail sales of consumer goods in the country declined by 3.9% in 2020, online retail sales of physical goods increased by 14.8% during the same period.
While sectors such as travel and accommodation, and restaurants services were affected due to the lockdown and travel restrictions, a strong growth is seen in online purchases of goods.
Alternative payment solutions such as Alipay and WeChat Pay are the most popular payment methods for online transactions in China, and both collectively account for over half of the total ecommerce sales in the country.
Furthermore, new payment models such as buy-now-pay-later are being launched to gain share of the largest ecommerce payment market. In March 2020, Tencent introduced Fen Fu, a credit feature in its WeChat app, allowing users to shop and pay later in instalments. Alipay offers a similar buy-now-pay-later service called Huabei.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now