UK Business Buying But Not Selling on the Net

Sales and Prices

Although there have been a few large, high-profile success stories, such as easyJet, a recent survey suggests that small businesses in the UK are not yet sharing in the much heralded e-commerce boom.

The latest McCannics e-survey finds that the proportion of UK business web-sites which accept credit card payments (29.6 per cent) is marginally down since December 1997. This is despite the fact that in the intervening seventeen months the explosive growth in internet use has continued apace and a number of UK banks have become more amenable to the use of credit cards on-line. The proportion of respondents which have given their own credit card details over the 'net has, however, risen sharply from 63.2 per cent in December 1997 to 81.5 per cent in May 1999 (see chart, right).

Not all business transactions are suited to payment by credit card (all of the retailers in the sample do accept credit cards). Nevertheless, it is striking that the companies which have started to accept credit cards over the internet during the past seventeen months are matched by those which used to accept them but have since stopped. The fact that there has been no increase is not due to a change in the sample composition. Analysis of just those companies which responded to both the December 1997 and May 1999 surveys shows the same picture.

Even among those companies which do accept credit cards, there is some disillusionment:

• "very few people trust the internet but a few do use it"
• "[customers] pay by credit card but fax us details due to the high cost of arranging for credit card transactions over the web for few, high value sales".

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