Merchants who accept Maestro for online payments in 187 countries worldwide 2024

This statistic is the result of research that tracks the use of "payment technology" across various websites found within certain countries. The source included seven categories in this:

• Bitcoin, e.g. bitcoin traders such as Coingecko;
• Checkout Buttons, e.g. Amazon Payments, Stripe, PayPal Button.;
• Currency, e.g the option to pay in euros or Japanese yen;
• Donation, e.g. Amazon Payments;
• Pay Later, e.g. buy now, pay later solutions;
• Payment Acceptance, e.g. Visa, PayPal, MasterCard, etc.
• Payment Processor, e.g. Braintree, Amazon Payments, Stripe, etc.

The categories "Bitcoin" and "Currency", as well as "Checkout buttons" and"Donation" were excluded from this statistic. The first two did not match with Statista's definition of a payment technology, whereas the other two led to double entries for the likes of Amazon Payments. PayPal was not listed under "Pay Later", so this was excluded as well.

The source states it looks at "payment technology", without explicit clarification on what it means with that. This has some important repercussions:

1. Statista assumes the source qualifies this as payment processing or payment methods offered by fintechs - as bank transfer systems, such as the Netherlands' iDEAL or the international SWIFT system, were not mentioned;
2. The data concerns URL domains from within that country, but may not necessarily reflect companies originating from within the country. An example was the webshop of Armada Music, a dance music label headquartered in the Netherlands but whose URL was based in the United States;
3. Payment methods offered in certain countries can be aimed at foreign, cross-border, users. For instance, the source stated that certain U.S. URLs offered Bancontact - a payment method that originates from Belgium.