Market size of B2C e-commerce in Europe 2021, by country

The United Kingdom appeared to have Europe's biggest B2C e-commerce market in 2021. UK consumers spent over 250 billion euros on online purchases, roughly twice as much as their French counterparts, who ranked second. Germany was Europe's third-biggest online market, with a revenue of 100 billion euros. This picture changes, however, when looking at the share of e-commerce within a country's GDP. Denmark, and Greece join the UK as countries where online shopping made up more than seven percent of GDP.

Mobile-driven shoppers

Surely, the UK is an outlier in the European e-commerce, as data on the mobile segment attests. Latest rankings from 2021 indicated that mobile commerce represented 60 percent of online retail sales in the United Kingdom, the highest percentage out of 19 countries in the European region.

How does Europe prefer to pay online?

Debit cards ranked as the most popular online payment method, while credit cards were preferred by nearly one-fifth of e-commerce users. When looking at the main card issuers, Visa and Mastercard were the leading payment card schemes in Europe, although with huge differences among countries.