Online card payments defy crisis: 60% increase in Q1

The value of e-commerce sales paid with bank cars online in the first three months of the year was 18.58 million euros, up 59% against the same time in 2008, according to RomCard data, quoted by Gecad ePayment.
RomCard is the leading processor of transactions involving bank cards in Romania and has 150 active merchants enrolled in the 3D Secure system.
“Even if the data refer exclusively to the progression of the online payments market, they show that electronic commerce is generally not very much affected by the current economic conditions, contrary to market expectations. Also, considering the volumes recorded for card payments and according to our own calculation, we would say online payments now account for as much as 20-22% of all payment methods,” Gecad ePayment’s general manager Carmen Sebe said. The total number of transactions registered in the above-mentioned period was almost 256,000. The ePayment platform handled 220,000 transactions, totalling 17 million euros
In the first quarter of this year, almost all sectors of electronic commerce, apart from IT (hardware products), mobile phone sales and recruitment services, saw a rise.
In the telecommunications sector, the number of transactions went up by 85% in the January-March period, compared with the first quarter of 2008.
The segment of travel and transport is the one with the best performance, seeing 111% more transactions than in the first quarter of last year.
The services segment, ranking third in terms of number of orders placed with stores working with Gecad ePayment, saw an 80% rise against the same period of 2008, with the services in highest demand being content access and web hosting.