Projections e-commerce by 2024 they see “excellent eyes”, as Leonardo Ottati, president of the Ecuadorian Chamber of Electronic Commerce (CECE), commented this Wednesday, December 13, calculating that in 2023 they will end up with transactions of more than 5000 million dollars, including all modes payments, and that by 2024 it will exceed 6,000 million dollars.

May the growth continue in 2024, may it be maintained, may all categories continue to grow and may the digital option continue this good process of creating trust and security offered by the offer, projected Ottati during the presentation of the sixth measurement. Studies on non-face-to-face transactions in Ecuador, conducted by CECE and Universidad de Especialidades Espíritu Santo (UEES).

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The research showed interesting results, and one of them is the amount of digital transactions recorded this year, from January to October, which, according to figures based on the Bank Administration, reached 16,143 million dollars, of which 23%, or 3,697 million dollars correspond to transactions e-commerce. These figures only include credit and debit cards as payment methods. To reach these amounts in 2023, 323 million digital transactions were made, of which 19% (62.4 million) e-commerce.

The results were presented by Silvana Dakduk, an international researcher invited for this research. The expert emphasized that three years ago, Ecuador did not appear on any regional platform, and currently there is a very large expansion of Ecuador, especially from 2020 to today.

When this newspaper consulted on the current situation in Ecuador in e-commerce, Otatti highlighted the process of digital maturation in which the country is. “I think one of the most tangible ways to see this digital maturation is the participation of large regional brands entering Ecuador, otherwise the indicators would not reflect the country’s digital economy,” said the head of CECE.

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For Ottati, this positive response from regional brands is a result of the growth of the digital option and the ecosystem as such that already provides not only the guarantees, but also the services that brands of this type need to operate.

Regarding this growth, Dakduk pointed out that in terms of Internet penetration, Ecuador is still in fifth regional place, but sixth in the use of services with a difference of 15% compared to availability. Ecuador has 86% internet penetration and 71% service usage. In terms of mobile devices, Ecuador has 92% user penetration with a growth of 4.2% in 2023 and is above the global percentage of users (68%) and Latin America (60%), which had a growth of 3.2% respectively 2.1%.

Other figures highlighted by the expert are that there is 82% financial inclusion in the country, that is, 10.1 million clients between the ages of 15 and 69 were part of the financial system, which includes a growth of 6.8% compared to 2022. entry of 700,000 new clients into the system. In addition, 69% of the population is financially active, which is reflected in the fact that 8.4 million clients have frequently used accounts.

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Dakduk also showed that 15% of the population have credit cards, 38% have debit cards, 40% make digital payments on their accounts, and 13% make purchases using mobile phones to pay online.

Another indicator is participation e-commerce from retail in Latin America. The expert indicated that in 2019, online transactions accounted for approximately 4.4% of the total volume of retail sales in Latin America, and this year a growth of 2.7% was predicted, but it was higher and amounted to 7.1%. In Ecuador, according to Dakduk, the same projections were made, namely that electronic commerce will grow by 2.7%, but it also exceeded expectations and ended this year with a growth of 10% with a total of 2659 million dollars and by 2027 a growth of 34 % is estimated in retail, or 3,564 million dollars.