Dynamic Growth in E-Commerce Sales in Hungary

The e-commerce market in Hungary is growing dynamically, with turnover in 2021 reaching more than HUF 1,200 billion, up 32 percentage points in the past year, according to a representative Payment Experience Report, supported by Mastercard, which was published in a statement on Monday.

Mastercard's marketing manager in Hungary, Péter Mondovics, said in the statement that the increase in turnover can be partly explained by the growth in the number of new entrants. On the other hand, more and more people see online shopping as a ‘visit to the mall’: they can do their daily shopping, buy birthday presents and send postal cheques in one go.

According to the research, the popularity of card payments is growing steadily, with 7 out of 10 Hungarians having used their card to shop online and more than half of the population having saved their card details with an online service provider. The secret of the latter's popularity is that it is possible to order online even when the card is not there or it would be difficult to get it out – a good example is public transport, where one in five Hungarians have ordered while travelling.

As the survey suggest, the 20 biggest e-commerce companies account for 95% of domestic e-commerce sales. At the same time, there are around 24,000 online shops in Hungary, providing jobs for 60,000 people.

The research was commissioned by Frontira and carried out by the Medián Institute for Public Opinion and Market Research. The Payment Experience Report is based on a questionnaire survey with 1,000 participants, representative of Hungarian online shoppers at least quarterly, a questionnaire with 1,000 respondents, a questionnaire with e-merchants, and interviews with 16 e-merchants and 15 industry experts.