Power Retail Sparks | Weekly Global News Round Up

Mobile Wallet Transactions to Surpass $500B in South Korea

Mobile transactions are likely to surpass USD500 billion in South Korea in the next three years, reports are saying. With high smartphone penetration and the elevated use of e-commerce, mobile transactions have become an increasingly popular choice for consumers throughout South Korea. The pandemic further accelerated the growth of online retail, which is bolstering the number of transactions from smartphones. The leading payment platforms now include Kakao Pay, Samsung Pay, Toss, Naver Pay, L.pay and LG Pay.

“South Koreans are well-accustomed to mobile wallets, with the country ranking one amongst the top globally, in terms of per capita spending using mobile wallets. High smartphone and Internet penetration, coupled with government’s push towards cashless transformation have supported this growth,” said Sowmya Kulkarni, Banking and Payments Analyst at GlobalData. E-commerce sales are predicted to account for 28.9 percent of total retail turnover in South Korea in 2021.

Amazon’s Web Traffic Falls from 2019

Amazon’s overall web traffic has dipped slightly in December 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. The traffic to the top 2000 North American e-commerce platforms jumped 35.7 percent in November and December 2020, compared to the year before. However, Amazon accounted for approximately 2 percent of the total online traffic, down from 30 percent in 2019.

Despite this, Amazon captured the most traffic online out of all of the Top 2000 North American online retailers. However, as more consumers venture outside of the Amazon bubble during the holidays, it opens up the discussion of how consumers are embracing newer online retailers in a post-COVID world. At this current time, e-commerce sales account for 15 percent of total retail turnover in the United States.

Walmart+ Membership Attracts Seven Milion Users in Five Months

Walmart may have only launched its membership program, Walmart+, five months ago, it has already hit a new milestone. In a report from Forbes, the retailer has recorded between seven and eight million shoppers by the end of January. This makes up approximately 13 percent of total Walmart shoppers.

Analysts are predicting that Walmart may expect to reach 10 million members within the first year of its launch. The ‘ideal candidates’ for Walmart+’s program spend approximately $1,900 annually with the retailer. This is almost double the $1,000 annual average of Walmart shoppers online. The retailer still has a long way to go to reach the same level of members as its rival, Amazon, which currently houses more than 142 million Prime members, in the United States alone.

Chinese E-Commerce to Account for 52 Percent of All Retail Sales

E-commerce is predicted to account for 52.1 percent of total retail sales, said a report from eMarketer. In 2020, e-commerce accounted for 44.8 percent of the total retail turnover in China. “China has long led the world in aggregate ecommerce sales figures and e-commerce’s share of total retail,” said Ethan Cramer-Flood, the Senior Writer at eMarketer.

In 2018, e-commerce accounted for 29.2 percent of total retail sales – a huge jump to what it is predicted to hit in 2021. “However, as recently as 2018, that share was only 29.2 percent, which is relatively close to what e-commerce’s share will be in South Korea and the UK this year. Yet China seemingly reached a behavioural tipping point over the past few years, wherein ecommerce enthusiasm accelerated rather than levelled off. While the pandemic did not create this trend, it certainly buttressed it, and China’s most recent ecommerce boom did not decelerate even after the country got a handle on the virus and the economy fully reopened,” said Cramer-Flood.

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