Digital wallet use surges online but lags for in-store purchases
The return to physical retail was perhaps the bigger story of 2022, but the rising number of consumers shopping online and paying with digital wallets are trends to watch as those numbers climb.
PYMNTS recorded the growth of eCommerce in “Digital Economy Payments: The Ascent of Digital Wallets,” the latest in our monthly report series chronicling the rapid rise of digital shopping and payments, with a sample of close to 2,800 consumers saying they broke out the smartphone more often at the checkout to use a digital wallet in the fourth quarter of 2022.
As much as grocery shopping is moving online, and with it the battle of the retail titans vying for bigger pieces of the action, non-grocery retail goods dwarfed online food shopping in Q4 2022, clocking in at $1.1 trillion according to our sample, compared to $182 billion spent on groceries.
Looking into eCommerce categories that rose or fell during the study period, consumers dialed back their apparel and sporting goods spend in Q4, for example, as discretionary items took a backseat to the necessities of life at the end of a year that saw inflation soar to its highest level in decades.
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