E-commerce: how much did the industry invoice in Peru during 2021?

The e-commerce accelerated its steps in Peru in 2021 tol grow 55%, with a movement of US$ 9,300 million, according to the E-commerce Observatory 2021-2022 study of the Peruvian Chamber of Electronic Commerce (capece).

“E-commerce continues to grow and, in 2021, that same trend has continued. In general, there has been an increase of more than 55% driven by purchases through digital wallets. Although this shows accelerated growth, there is still a long way to go to achieve the democratization of electronic commerce in companies in the interior of the country”, said Helmundt Cáceda, president of Capece.

This means that many Peruvians started shopping online for the first time. According to the union, at the end of 2021, 41.8% of Peruvians (13.9 million) bought through this channel.

Cáceda explained that before the pandemic (2019) only 1% of Peruvians (6 million) bought online. With the impact of COVID-19, this has accelerated. For example, in the province, unlike other years, online purchases increased, growing by 30% compared to 2020, although their purchase frequency is much lower than in the capital.

In that line, the number of businesses that they sell online it has increased. In 2020, more than 260,000 businesses executed their sales through the online channel, currently 300,000 do so.

“Of that total, more than 90 thousand have a transactional website (virtual store, mobile application, etc.). Although 50% of companies that sell through the online channel are from the province, their transactions are less than in the capital”, the leader specified.

Thus, the spontaneous digitization of micro-entrepreneurs due to the health crisis has helped the country improve its position in the digital competitiveness index. According to Capece, the Peru It has gone from position 61 in 2019 to position 55 at the end of 2020. For this reason, the union considers that the development of electronic commerce should be a national policy.

The categories that grew the most: Online restaurant consumption grew 92% last year versus 2020 (which registered record growth). Fashion (81%), Technology (84%), while the categories that have not yet recovered is tourism with -18% versus 2019.

The new normal in e-commerce

Before the pandemic, 12.5% ​​of card transactions were through e-commerce, currently this represents 45%.

“We see that more and more people use their card to make purchases through the online channel. Although in 2020 the main means of payment was the debit card, because consumers did not want to get into debt, in this 2021 the credit card has once again led online purchases, although the surprise of the year has been the adoption and growth of digital wallets in B2C payments”, explained Cáceda.

Although the data shows that ecommerce has had a preponderant growth as a result of the pandemic, this industry is just taking off. Proof of this is that online sales only represent 4.5% of commerce in general, while in countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it exceeds 9%.