Electronic commerce entails the exposure of digital currencies, the advertising of which appears while browsing.
The confinement measures and restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic generated a greater penetration of the use of the internet to buy, sell, pay for services or make digital transfers.
The rise of electronic commerce is a sign of the level of confidence that Ecuadorians have today in the use of digital media. “The number of online shoppers is expected to double in 2021”, Affirms Leonardo Ottati, president of the Ecuadorian Chamber of Electronic Commerce.
It marketed in a non-face-to-face way through electronic commerce went from $ 1,650 million in 2019 to $ 2,300 million in 2020. The estimate is that in 2021 there will be an increase of between 20% and 40%. “Double-digit growth,” he says.
The virtual offering has been very customer-focused, which has built trust. “Not only when making the payment, but to whom the payment was made, how, and it also has to do with whether the product they offer me is real and whether it has the characteristics that I am seeing on the screen. First, I want the online payment processing to be secure, and the other thing is that the offer understood that the best way to underpin digital maturity was by complying with their offerings, such as product arrival time or quality, ”says Ottati.
To this is added that commercial houses multiplied digital options due to the increase in online buyers. “We know that banks have more than 70% of their transactions carried out outside their offices, their branches”Says Ottati, which includes what is done online from computing devices and at ATMs. “Let’s call it not humanized”, He adds.
Before the pandemic, there were categories in which non-face-to-face (online) sales represented 0.5% of the total, but today they exceed 10%. “There are cases in which they are even the most important sale, such as fashion and beauty, household appliances and electronic products,” says Ottati.
Greater use of the internet leads to the appearance of investment options present on the web, such as the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies, which appear in advertisements while browsing.
“This depends on the knowledge that citizens have about it, but there is no way to stop this. Today digital currencies are not so commercial. I do not use them to buy a T-shirt or a refrigerator (which is prohibited by law), it is used as a speculation tool at the investment level, because as well as those that have explosions upwards (in their price) there are others that happened the same but they no longer exist ”, says Ottati.
You have to have a certain level of risk tolerance to make these types of investments, he adds.
Luis Espinosa Goded, professor of Economics at the San Francisco de Quito University, affirms that cryptocurrencies have multiple functions, since they can serve as money in terms of payment or accumulation of capital for savings. The so-called technology blockchain (set of technologies that allow to keep a secure, decentralized, synchronized and distributed record of digital operations without the need for the intermediation of third parties) It also allows other things such as food traceability or serve as public faith.
“The problem is that we speak in a hypothetical, what could happen if they became massive, at the moment they are a reality and are used in a certain type of market. There are certain people who use them in different transactions, such as in video games, others use it as an investment, but it remains to be seen how much more they will flow, ”says Espinosa.
Basically the price of bitcoin depends on the supply and demand determined above all by the confidence that potential investors have that it will be a good monetary alternativehe adds.
The question is the role that states have over the money that citizens use. “In principle, buying or selling what you want online is not illegal, it does not even require a regulation. If I decide to spend my money in bitcoin (one of the most established cryptocurrencies) it is perfectly legal. If I decide to transfer it to another person anywhere in the world it is legal. Today, the States do not have the capacity, for example, to control wallets or in this case the Tax on the Outflow of Foreign Currency and that does not mean that it is illegal or even illegitimate, ”says Espinosa.
The debate on the regulations that States will make regarding cryptocurrencies has been going on for almost a decade.
El Salvador became the only country, for the moment, that established the use of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, as legal tender along with the US dollar. “This, in reality, is a setback,” says analyst Alberto Acosta Burneo, since it eliminates its advantages with state intervention, which goes against the search for monetary freedom that motivates its use.
“Create a $ 150 million fund with which you can manipulate the conversion value of bitcoin in El Salvador,” he says.
In Ecuador there are already different businesses that admit cryptocurrencies, despite the fact that it is not a liberating means of payment, says Espinosa. “Although if both parties agree, I don’t see why it can’t be legal.”
A total of 3,027.6 million transactions were made in the financial system between January and October 2021. And the invoicing of active credit and debit cards between January and November 2021 reached $ 12,445 million, according to figures from the Superintendency of Banks of Ecuador. (I)
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