E-commerce leaders consider online business as a perspective income opportunity
Cross-border e-commerce & holiday season: new study by Visa. Source: shutterstock.com
Visa released this year’s Global Merchant E-commerce Study (Visa GME Study), which shows that e-commerce leaders globally view international expansion and finding new cross-border customers as critical to driving growth, particularly heading into the prime holiday shopping period. 87% of e-commerce leaders surveyed believe expanding cross-border is one of their company’s biggest growth opportunities in the years ahead. Today, two in three businesses (66%) that sell online are already selling cross-border.
The holiday season is always a critical period for e-commerce business leaders, as it brings more than a quarter of annual incomes to 86% of companies surveyed.
At the same time, 52% of the e-commerce leaders consider holiday season as risky and competitive, bringing more new challenges. Other global events are also a factor; trade policy is cited most frequently by US (34%) and Chinese (54%) leaders, while uncertainty in Europe is a concern for a clear majority (64%) of UK leaders.
Additional key findings include:
- Whether purchasing goods domestically or internationally, customers want a similar experience. Leaders cite the most important factors as: quick delivery (44%), easy checkout (41%) and convenient payment methods (41%).
- Two in three (66%) of businesses that do not sell cross-border plan to do so in the near future, with 90% eyeing the next three years.
- The international expansion journey can be a daunting venture. A vast majority of those who haven’t expanded internationally (87%) haven’t even made attempts to do so. Top challenges cited are accepting and processing foreign transactions (37%) and shipping issues (42%).
