Visa handles GBP 3,170 worth of online payments per second

Monday, September 30, 2013 - 11:19 by Mike Price

British consumers are known for their voracious appetites for shopping online, but new figures from payment card provider, Visa, have shown just how much we love spending cash on the web.

In the past year, the popularity of e-commerce has meant that Visa has seen about £3,170 being spent online every single second, according to the Retail Gazette.

Back in 2009, the annual amount which Visa users spent online was just over £50 billion, but in 2013 it is expected to be more than double this amount. In fact, in the first half of the year, payments worth £52 billion were handled, suggesting it is going to be another windfall for online outlets.

In a statement, Visa asserted that it believes UK shoppers to be world leaders when it comes to carrying out safe shopping online, while e-commerce sites set up by British companies are performing so well that they are attracting a lot of overseas consumers to spend their money over here.

About £16 billion in e-commerce purchases are expected to be attributed to non-domestic buyers this year, a little over half of which comes from outside of the EU.

Americans represent the biggest chunk of this external investment in British e-commerce, ahead of Italians in second place and the French in third, sharing their position on the podium with the Germans and the Japanese.

Visa spokesperson, Marc O'Brien, said that the fashion industry in particular was seeing the benefits of e-commerce expansion, with growth continuing to boost sales, year on year.

The UK looks set to continue its global dominance of e-commerce activity for the foreseeable future, particularly since Brits now have more ways than ever to shop online, thanks to tablets and smartphones being so ubiquitous today.