A lack of payment options blights e-commerce in Spain

By Carlos Pombo, Associate Asensi Abogados

While e-commerce is gaining traction in Spain, the sector suffers from a lack of available payment options online. While this can be viewed as an obstacle to the growth of e-commerce, it also presents an opportunity for epayment platform providers that are now emerging on the Spanish market. Carlos Pombo, an Associate at Asensi Abogados law firm, discusses the state of Spain’s online  payments market and explains why some e-payment platform providers are currently unregulated under Spanish legislation.

The number of online transactions in Spain has increased by about 15%-20% annually in recent years, and this trend is expected to
continue in the medium and long term. That growth stems from several factors such as, for instance, the high percentage of the population that has access to the internet in Spain, the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, and the gradually increasing confidence on the part of users when it comes to providing their bank details or their credit or debit card details in order to buy goods over the internet.

Read the whole article (published on 17 April 2014) here.