E-commerce and payment preferences in Poland

Poland: an e-commerce & payments primer

Poland is a booming market. E-commerce is worth around US$28 billion annually and is expected to grow at a rate of 11% a year between 2022 and 2026 [1]. According to the European Commission, 18% of Polish small businesses sell online, up from 13% just two years ago, and 5% use an online store to sell cross border [2]. 

The average Polish online shopper spends US$727 with e-merchants every year [1]. The things Poles buy most online are fashion (purchased by 45% of online shoppers), electronics (19%) and toys (15%) [1]. Almost a third of Polish online shoppers buy things from merchants based outside Poland [1], with China, Germany and the UK as the favorite online cross-border shopping destinations [1].

Allegro is the biggest online store in Poland, with 260 million online sales and almost fourteen million active sellers [3]. In total, around 7% of all consumer sales in Poland happen online [1]. Almost 80% of Poles shop online at least once in a year [4]. Around 45% of online sales happen on marketplaces such as Allegro or Amazon Poland [5].

Poles pay for just 18% of online purchases using credit cards [1]. In the remaining 82% of e-commerce transactions, Polish online shoppers use alternative and local payment methods. They use bank transfers to pay for 54% of online purchases, an e-wallet in 18%, cash in 3%, and 7% of purchases they pay for with some other means [1]. The card market is split between Visa and Mastercard, each with 50% of the market [1].

Polish e-commerce: enabling and limiting factors

Poland is 28^th out of 160 countries on the World Bank Global Logistics Performance Index [6]. The Polish parcel sector is dominated by the Polish logistics company InPost, which has a 40% market share [6]. Collectively, Polish courier companies deliver more than one billion parcels each year [6]. And their capacity is growing by 31% a year [6]. Around a third of all warehouse capacity in the country is given over to e-commerce, an 84% increase since 2019 [7]. 

Almost 90% of Poles have a bank account and 19% a credit card [1]. Financial exclusion shouldn’t be a problem for merchants who want to expand, or sell cross border, into Poland. But as the payment data above indicates, merchants and their partners cannot rely on standard US or UK payment models. Less than a fifth of adult Poles have a credit card. Support for alternative and local payment methods is key for any merchant planning to crack the Polish e-commerce market.

Almost 80% of Poles have an Internet connection and 65% have an Internet-enabled smartphone [1]. Over 40% of the population has at least basic digital skills [2]. More than 85% of the population uses the Internet, 66% online banking and 65% social media [2]. Unless their business model is built around targeting specific and under-server groups, a merchant entering the Polish market will have no problem with digital exclusion.

Footnotes:

1. Original PPRO research 
2. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/desi-poland 
3. https://about.allegro.eu/financial-results 
4. https://www.gemius.com/all-reader-news/the-2022-e-commerce-in-poland-report.html
5. https://ecommercegermany.com/blog/poland-the-e-commerce-gateway-to-central-and-eastern-europe 
6. https://europaproperty.com/the-value-of-the-cep-parcel-market-in-poland-has-exceeds-pln17-billion
7. https://industrial.pl/en/news/reports/647-e-commerce-is-bursting-at-its-seams-and-warehouses-are-following-report