Ecommerce transactions remain high during pandemic, ACI Worldwide finds

Global ecommerce transactions has increased by 19% in July 2020 compared to July 2019, according to analysis by ACI Worldwide of hundreds of millions of ecommerce transactions from global merchants.

The data also showed that sales of outdoor items saw the highest year-over-year (YoY) increase from 9% in 2019 to 12%  in 2020.

Fraud continues to increase as criminals take advantage of CNP methods of payment, including buy-online-pick-up-in-store or click-and-collect methods. While fraudulent transactions by volume were slightly lower in 2020 (2.3%) compared to 2019 (2.6%), the data showed that fraud transactions by value were higher in 2020 (4.4%) compared to 2019 (3.7%).

The ecommerce purchasing trends are:

• sectors that continue to experience a major increase in spending in July include gaming (52% increase) and retail (48% increase);
• sectors that continue to experience a major decrease in spending in July include travel (16% decrease) and ticketing (86% decrease);
• consumers spent USD 52 on average per order of PPE items;
• the average ticket price of genuine purchases dropped by USD 26 in 2020 compared to 2019.

The fraud trends are:

• transactional value of fraud attempts was 3.5% in July, driven by purchases of electronics such as laptops, TVs and webcams;
• the average ticket price for fraud attempts increased by USD 10 in the period January through July 2020, compared to the same period in 2019;
• non-fraud chargebacks increased by 23% in June 2020 compared to June 2019.

Overall, ecommerce sales continued to increase YoY in the US (13%), UK (17%) and APAC (43%). This was driven by sub-sectors such as DIY, apparel, alcohol, digital goods, and gaming.