SA e-commerce ‘grows up’

Johannesburg - The number of merchants using South African online payment gateway PayGate has doubled this year, indicating an uptick in e-commerce in the country.

PayGate - which performs payment processing to all major South African banks for e-merchants - has revealed its growth amid research that has pointed to higher local levels of online shopping.

Results of a MasterCard survey released in March, for example, said that the South African e-commerce industry is growing because 24% of local online spend was on foreign shopping sites, down from 27% in 2013 and 33% in 2012.

World Wide Worx Managing Director Arthur Goldstuck also said earlier this year that the size of South Africa’s e-commerce market could be pegged at R4.4 billion for 2013.

And PayGate said factors that have driven growth for it this year include the launch of its mobile payment services dubbed ‘Zapper’ and ‘MasterPass’.

Meanwhile, big banks and retailers pushing e-commerce offerings are also driving up demand, said PayGate.

“The number of merchants we serve doubled this year, and the vast majority of those are new entrants to the market,” said PayGate CEO Peter Harvey in a statement.

Harvey added that his company has also witnessed “significant growth” in the number of transactions, although he didn't disclose numbers.

“Considering the weakness of the SA economy and of the rand, that’s an extremely positive development,” he said, referring to growth projects of less than 2% for South Africa this year.

In February this year, internet measuring company Effective Measure also released results of a survey conducted with 10 000 respondents which found that 45% of SA’s online shoppers are from Gauteng while 22.6% are from the Western Cape.

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