Owing to its unusually dynamic development, the Internet has been used for various commercial purposes, with e-commerce as one of the most important applications. This market has already become a vital segment of retail in many countries all over the world. However, the degree of e-commerce development depends on many factors, including the availability of the Internet, the activity of users as regards shopping, customers’ trust in online transactions, and the amount of a household’s disposable income per capita (Oxley and Yeung, 2001). Consequently, there exist considerable differences in the use of e-commerce and payment methods in particular countries. Figure 1 illustrates the percentage of Internet users and online shoppers in the European Union in 2007. The percentage of online shoppers in the whole population (aged 16-74) was the biggest in the United Kingdom (44%), and only slightly lower in the Netherlands and Denmark (43%) as well as in Germany (41%). The average percentage of online shoppers in the whole European Union (27 states) equalled 23%.
2 Zhang and Li (2006) were the first to analyze the choice of payment methods by individuals, considering together behavior of both buyer and seller at eBay auction system.
3 The problem of managers’ decisions on acceptance of payment methods was analyzed e.g. in works of Loke
(2007) and Arango and Taylor (2008); however these papers concern physical Points-of-Sale, not online transactions, and cover only cash and card payments.
4 In this paper the term e-commerce is used in a narrow sense and refers to the online market and transactions concluded via Internet.
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In Poland, 11% of the society shopped online, which ranked the country first among the new EU member states from Central Europe. It must be noticed that this result was only slightly lower than that recorded for Spain (13%) and higher than the one for Italy (7%) and Portugal (6%).
Figure 1. Percentage of Internet users and online shoppers in the European Union in 2007