The number of online credit card payments is expected to hit a record high for the whole of this year after registering a high double-digit growth rate in the first six months, as more stores offer their products online and accept card payments, the National Credit Card Center (NCCC) said yesterday.
The center’s comment came after its data showed that the number of online credit card transactions grew 38.5 percent annually to 543 million during the January-to-June period, after expanding 160 percent year-on-year to 889 million for the whole of last year.
Online credit card payments refer to transactions made with credit cards on Web sites, mobile applications, streaming services and other channels, it said.
However, the average amount spent per payment declined to NT$882 in the first half of this year from NT$969 in the same period last year and NT$1,065 in the whole of 2020, the agency said.
The downward trend in the average amount of spending is due to more people using credit cards to pay for orders on food delivery platforms, it said.
For the first half of this year, restaurants partnering with delivery platforms continued to outrank e-commerce platforms, online wholesale stores, on-demand streaming services and online bookstores in terms of online credit card spending, indicating that the service gained more popularity among consumers, it said.
E-commerce platforms, online supermarkets and online wholesalers ranked second, as they did last year, while online convenience stores that enable consumers to pay in advance via mobile applications for goods they pick up later at the store made the list for the first time, ranking third, the agency said.
“It might be surprising to see that the online services of convenience stores are so popular, given that visiting such stores does not take much effort. But it seems that consumers are embracing these new services,” an NCCC official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
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