2017 was a great year for the Brazilian e-commerce market. Not only has there been an improvement in the country’s economic scenario, which has impacted positively on e-commerce revenue, but there has also been an increase in the total number of consumers purchasing online and taking part in important e-commerce events, such as this year’s Black Friday. With the end of the year around the corner, it’s time for a retrospective of facts and numbers about the Brazilian e-commerce market in 2017.
Brazilian E-commerce 2017
We have already talked about the trends to be observed in 2018 and let’s now have a look at the 2017 highlights of the Brazilian e-commerce market:
- M-commerce: mobile device usage for online purchases in Brazil has increased significantly in the past few years. Earlier this year, there was a total of 198 million smartphones in the country, 17% more than the previous year. Furthermore, the total number is expected to increase to 208 million smartphones by the end of the 2017. Thanks to that, m-commerce already represents nearly one third of the e-commerce transaction in Brazil, up from 12% in 2015 and 22% in 2016.
- Cross-border purchases: a growing number of Brazilian consumers purchase online from international websites. Nearly half of digital consumers in the country have purchased at least once on foreign websites. Among the reasons to opt for an international e-commerce instead of a local one, buyers mention: better price (76%), accessing items not easily available in Brazil (53%) and variety of products (48%).
- H1 2017: the final numbers for the e-commerce market in 2017 will only be available next year, but the first half of the year had excellent results. With a total revenue of BRL 21 billion, the segment saw a growth of 7.5% in comparison to the same period in 2016. Furthermore, there was an increase of 10.3% in the number of consumers purchasing online. Mobile devices had a special importance for the e-commerce in the first half of 2017, with 35.9% more transactions made through these devices than the previous year. Because of the great results from H1, the Brazilian e-commerce market is expected to grow 10% to 12% in 2017.
- Payment methods: although used to paying in installments with credit cards, in 2017 nearly half (48.2%) of Brazilian digital buyers chose one-off payments. In addition, boleto bancário is still the second most used online payment method in the country, representing nearly a quarter of the payment transactions of the Brazilian e-commerce.
- Black Friday: Each year, the date becomes more and more important in Brazil, with a huge part of the population taking part in the Black Friday sales. This years’ Black Friday was a great success, with an increase in sales of 10.3%.
PagBrasil’s Retrospective
We have had a busy year, as you can see:
- Events: PagBrasil was present in several e-commerce events around the globe in 2017, such as MPE in Berlin, eShow Barcelina, VTEX Day 2015, Europe Money 20/20, Fórum E-commerce Brasil, Shoptalk Europe, among others. We have a lot more planned for 2018, so make sure to follow us on LinkedIn to stay tuned.
- Special collaborations: 2017 has been a good year in terms of new partnerships and collaborations. Last January, we integrated with the e-commerce platform VTEX, in a partnership aimed at boosting e-commerce sales for local and cross-border merchants using VTEX e-commerce solution. In addition, in June, we collaborated on the Future of Payments report, an initiative of Business Reporter. And we end the year with an integration with ACI Worldwide, extending options for payment processing in Brazil for all merchants using ACI platform.
- Launches and new features: apart from the new integration options for VTEX and ACI merchants, PagBrasil has also developed a payment link solution, ideal for offline payments or websites that do not have a checkout page. In addition, we have also improved our Shopify plugin, introducing a series of new features aimed at improving sales conversions. Furthermore, earlier in Q4 we have introduced our split-payout solution, ideal for marketplaces looking for an automated way of splitting payments.
As the year ends, we take the opportunity to thank everyone we have worked with this year and we wish all our clients, friends, partners and readers an excellent 2018!