Visa, MasterCard and Maestro cards - most popular payment tools with UK online shops

Visa Electron and Solo cards are among the least accepted online payment tools. All 400 UK-based online shops involved in the study accept Visa card as an online payment method, 99 percent of them accept MasterCard and 76 percent accept Maestro cards. Despite their high popularity among UK consumers, American Express, Visa Electron and JCB cards have registered low acceptance rates with online shops (45 percent for American Express, 42 percent for Visa Electron and 18 percent for JCB cards). According to the study, this might be related to the fact that such cards are owned by consumers with lower credit rates, such as foreigners or students.
Alternative payment methods such as PayPal and Google Checkout also register low acceptance rates with UK online shops, despite the fact that such payment options have a growing number of users. The study indicates that 17 percent of the online shops involved in the study accept PayPal as payment option and only 5 percent accept Google Checkout.
The study was conducted by ShopSpree.