Okay, we talked about the growth potential of the payment gateway vertical in the last post. All dominant players from the other sub-verticals are just jumping on to the bandwagon. Let us see how much of the retail sales has been done through the Internet/Mobile over the years.

Here are some graphs just that give you a quantitative sense of what is in store for the players in that business.

For the sake of simplicity, I have converted all US and UK numbers to Euro. The Source of the information is US Census Bureau reports and the Kelkoo study in the UK (http://press.kelkoo.co.uk/euonlineroundup.html). More than the absolute numbers, look at the relative sizes and the growth and the magnitude of the overall retail sales..

eCommerce sales figures since 2008 (all figures in billions of € )

The important point to note is that all these payments will be handled by the payment gateways. From the payment gateways, it can either use the ACH networks or payment networks or directly the banks depending on the payment instrument used and the payment gateway used..

With more and more people relying on the Internet for their purchases and with more channels becoming prominent (Mobile, Tablets, Other devices) and more eStores providing better deals, the above growth rates dwarf what we are yet to see.

If you think the above figures are high, just look at how much retail sales is still happening offline. The graph below shows the online and offline figures in 2011 (all figures in billions of Euros)

Comparison of eCommerce sales and total retail (offline + online) sales in 2011 - in billions of €)

Oh, if I haven’t made it clear yet, this is just the RETAIL B2C sales.  We have the other sectors such as transportation, publishing, securities,… in the B2C segment.

and I haven’t covered the B2B segment yet. Be prepared for a big shock while I get you a perspective on that!

So hail Paypal and Visa !! Just be nice to your customers and grow bigger and bigger and bigger…