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17 Gennaio 2019

Gifts online: Boom in Christmas 2018

After the holidays, it’s time for families to take stock of what they’ve spent for Christmas shopping, which in fact is a threat to the end-of-the-year accounting.

At the end of 2018 Italian consumers were not discouraged by the infamous online frauds, in fact, they preferred credit card and mobile payments instead of the same old cash payments.

The number of payments made with debit, credit or prepaid cards managed by SIA during Christmas week was 92 million, with a 26% increase compared to 2017. Overall, from 1 to 24 December credit card transactions have risen by a third. One in five payments was made on e-commerce platforms, for a total of 55 million transactions (+ 7.8% compared to 2017).

Thanks to a monitoring system ever more precise and specific on transactions, consumers have left behind any kind of bias, finally trusting online payments. A level of safety that is guaranteed by a system which is controlled directly by the customer in real time, also with notifications that are received via app or text message in order to report every use of the card for amounts above 2 euros.

Italian consumers, moreover, have no fear of using mobile payments, that’s the reason why it’s becoming an increasingly common practice.

Safety and monitoring of expenditure are guaranteed by the fact that entering the PIN code is the only way to complete a payment.

The Italian market is gradually but constantly aligning with the other EU countries’ online payments percentages.