Pago Study 2004 shows: E-commerce has grown up

Again the study allows an insight into the buying and payment pattern of consumers from Germany, Europe and the non-European foreign countries as well as into the use of credit cards in E-retailing under the title Status Quo of E-Retailing in Germany and Europe. Besides the study offers statistically verified information about the risk of bad debts for online-retailers. That makes the Pago study the only investigation on E-commerce that is not based on surveys. It is also of interest in this context that on the one hand the choice of the offered payment methods in the stores remains constant and on the other hand the shoppers make more and more use of the credit cards. Cards are used for payment in more than 92.6 percent of all purchasing transactions There is a significant difference with German stores: Here electronic direct debit is the most popular payment method - it is used in more than 64.3 percent of the cases. There is still a distinct risk of bad debts in E-commerce for the online-retailers. The chargeback rate is a parameter for bad debts with the credit card use. It is clearly below last years value in international stores (2002: 1.1 percent; 2003: 0.81 percent), which points to the fact that fraud protection methods have been more effective than in the year 2002. Thanks to the introduction of a new Data Warehouse technology and the support by experts of the university of Karlsruhe it was possible to carry out the investigations for the Pago Study 2004 with even more accuracy. In addition it was possible to examine individual branches separately for the first time. Here the focus was on E-retail (the online-retailing with goods), the online-gambling (sport betting and gambling) and the telecommunication services.