The volume of online payments reached a level of EUR 80.5 million in the first six months of this year in Romania, up 18 percent over the same period last year, according to ePayment. Online payments are still dominated by orders for the purchase of travel packages and airline tickets, utility bills, services and telecommunications.

Unlike the average increase in all markets in the first six months, there have been areas that rose over 30 percent. Thus, the service sector has increased by 63 percent in number of transactions, compared to the same period last year, IT & C sales increased by 37 percent, the flowers sales segment increased by 28 percent, and book sales went up with 26 percent.

The months when most distribution transactions were made was May, with 186,000 transactions, while in January, usually the worst month, 183,000 transactions were recorded.

For the second half of the year, estimates are maintained, with the e-commerce online payment market being expected to exceed the value of EUR 160 million.

ePayment is part of PayU International group, owned by Naspers Ltd, the second player in eCommerce worldwide. In Romania, ePayment processed over two million transactions in 2010, worth EUR 121 million.

Irina Popescu, irina.popesscu@romania-insider.com