Global eCommerce Stats, Sales Trends & Mobile Shopping Forecasts For 2025
Global eCommerce is growing tremendously fast, reshaping how people shop around the world. This guide takes a close look at the state of eCommerce in 2025. It covers the market size, growth predictions, sales patterns across industries, how buyers are changing their habits and the increase in mobile shopping. We also look at payment choices (from digital wallets to BNPL to crypto), new advances like AI, AR/VR and the main problems online stores face.
Global eCommerce Market Overview
Figure: Retail e-commerce sales worldwide (2021–2027). Global online sales may reach nearly $7 trillion in 2025 making up about 21% of total retail sales.
Market Size & Growth: The global eCommerce market now exceeds the trillion-dollar mark. Retail eCommerce sales around the world may reach about $6.86 trillion in 2025 rising from $5.82 trillion in 2023. This means an increase of roughly 8.4% from 2024 and continues a daily growth trend (with a 7.8% CAGR expected from 2025 to 2027).
By 2027, eCommerce is expected to represent close to $8 trillion or about 22.6% of the retail share.
This steady double-digit rise shows that online shopping holds a growing role in the world economy. Main factors include more people using the Internet, better delivery systems along with buyers choosing the ease of shopping online.
Regional Insights:
Growth happens around the world but not all areas grow the same. The Asia-Pacific area leads eCommerce by volume, driven by China’s massive online market. China alone tops the list with an estimated $3.45 trillion in 2025, which makes up nearly half of global online sales.
China’s eCommerce sales now fill about 47.3% of its total retail sales – the highest online shopping reach among major markets.
With over 900 million digital buyers, China (expected to hit $3.98 trillion by 2027) sets the pace for eCommerce worldwide.
The United States ranks second with about $1.38 trillion planned for 2025 and may reach $1.88 trillion by 2029.
U.S. online sales cover roughly 16% of its total retail, which shows more room to grow compared to Asia. Other key eCommerce markets include the United Kingdom ($195.7 billion), Japan ($169.4 billion), South Korea ($147 billion) and Germany ($141.2 billion).
Rising markets in Southeast Asia, Latin America along with Africa also grow fast as more people get Internet access. As a whole Asia-Pacific acts as the engine of eCommerce growth – by 2028 it should offer well over one-third of all global online sales.
North America coupled with Europe remain key regions but show steadier growth. This means companies must design plans for fast-growing areas (Asia, the Middle East, Africa) while still trying innovative ideas in established ones.
Key Growth Drivers:
The thriving eCommerce scene works thanks to several factors. More people using the Internet and smartphones have brought billions of new buyers online in the past ten years – as of 2025, nearly 33% of the world’s people (2.77 billion individuals) shop online. Better online ties even in developing places expand the pool of customers every day.
Simplicity and ease: buyers can shop day or night from home or on mobile, check prices easily along with get an array of items that local shops do not provide. This has shifted the way people buy toward digital channels. The COVID crisis sped up eCommerce adoption by about five years in places like the U.S., when lockdowns made buyers and sellers turn to online shopping.
Many of those changes stayed. Better digital payment choices and shipping have cut down obstacles with one-click orders to faster delivery and simple returns, the online experience feels smoother than ever. Cross-border buying has meant that more than half of online buyers around the world have looked for items from retailers outside their home country.
Sales Data & Trends
eCommerce touches nearly every retail sector however some are head and shoulders above the pack. Electronics leads online shopping worldwide, with buyers spending around $922.5 billion. This includes items such as smartphones, laptops, home devices and gadgets – items that come with more options and lower prices usually when bought online. Clothing / accessories come second at roughly $760 billion showing the strong online desire for apparel, shoes along with accessories. Other important sections include Food ($460.1 billion) and Beverages ($248.7 billion). Home improvement and Furniture also represent very large online markets, each worth about $220 billion. Other major online categories include media at $193.9 billion, beauty at $169.6 billion and toys and hobbies at $89.8 billion.
The chart below shows the top product groups and how much money they make online:
Fast-growing groups also matter – for example, home cleaning products and groceries have grown quickly online since 2022 (with more than 19% growth in home cleaning and 16.6% in groceries).
Revenue Growth and Forecasts:
Overall, the trend points to strong growth, though the speed changes by group. After a big jump in 2020, growth slowed a bit but it’s stayed healthy. Global online retail sales rose about 10% in 2023 and experts think they will climb around 8–9% each year until 2025.
Major Sales Drivers:
Better online shopping experiences with personalized content help increase sales – for instance, suggestions based on artificial intelligence and custom ads raise the amount people spend. Global online stores like Amazon, Alibaba along with local sites like Flipkart and MercadoLibre, make it simple for companies to sell online and reach a large pool of buyers instantly. Social media and online influencers also boost online sales: shoppers find popular items on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. About 62% of users have bought an item after seeing it on social media showing that social commerce pushes demand.
Reports show that 52% of online shoppers search for items internationally tapping into a global market. The ease of online shopping and trust in the process have convinced people who usually shop offline, such as older buyers, to join online shopping because of better security and simpler use of modern online stores.
Consumer Behaviour Insights
Changing Shopping Habits:
People’s shopping ways have changed a lot in the digital age. A large group of people now shop online every week. In 2025, 2.77 billion people around the world buy things online which means about one out of every three people. And of these more than 34% of buyers now shop online at least once a week showing that online shopping is a normal part of life for many.
The amount of people that now search for product information and check reviews before buying is staggering! 99% of online buyers read reviews. Online stores, brand pages, social media, price checkers – they are all part of the process which shows the need for stores to be present on all channels.
Buyers now also favour products that last longer. Sales are growing for used items, eco-friendly products along with crafts directly from the maker. They now expect personal experiences when shopping online. They want websites and apps to remember what they like, show products that fit their taste and offer personalised special deals. They leave sites that are hard to use or do not work well on phones. The modern online buyer also welcomes new names and sellers from other countries. Good experiences plus fair prices now earn loyalty instead of habits.
Shopping directly on social media is growing fast:
Most users have tried items they saw on social feeds and 62% of buyers have made a purchase there. Younger groups enjoy the fun and discoverable style of shopping on platforms like TikTok, Instagram or Facebook shops.
About 80% of shoppers worldwide use a smartphone to search for an item or a store when they are in a physical shop, which shows that online and offline shopping now mix together in vast majority of minds. Buyers wait less for orders – faster deliveries, like same-day or next-day work, set new rules. Shoppers now choose stores that can send products quickly and reliably showing that ease and speed often win over other factors. Consumers in 2025 have lots of information, want convenience, in addition to using any channel that fits them – whether it is a phone, computer, voice search or store.
Mobile Shopping Trends:
Figure: Share of mobile commerce (m-commerce) sales in total eCommerce sales. Mobile sales grew from about $2.4 trillion (48% of online sales) in 2021 to a projected $4.0 trillion (59% of online sales) in 2025, which shows that smartphones now lead online shopping.
Rise of M-Commerce:
Mobile shopping now forms the base of eCommerce in 2025. With more people using smartphones around the world, they choose to shop on these devices instead of on a computer. Experts estimate that mobile sales will take about 59% of the total online retail sales in 2025, which means about $4.01 trillion of the $6.86 trillion spent online. In simple terms more than half of all web spending happens on smartphones or tablets. This number has grown for ten years! In 2016 mobile accounted for just 52% of online purchases. The rise in mobile shopping ties directly to more smartphones around the world – by 2025, more than 4.8 billion people own a smartphone (about 59% of the world’s people) and nearly 1.65 billion buy items on their phones. These numbers will grow further as cheaper phones reach new markets. Besides more users, mobile shopping now shows deeper involvement: buyers spend a huge amount of time on shopping apps. Shoppers spend over 41.9 billion hours each year on apps, which shows that mobile shopping now plays a large role in daily life.
Mobile vs. Desktop & Regional Patterns:
In many regions, people now prefer phones over computers when shopping online. In the Asia-Pacific area, many use phones first – for example, in China nearly 64% of e-commerce deals finish on phones and in South Korea about 70% of online buys come from phones. In developing regions many use smartphones as the only way to connect to the internet. Even in markets that once chose computers, phones grow in use. In the UK, about 63% of online shopping happens via phone, which shows high phone use plus good mobile retail options (many people use store apps). In the US, the change is slower but steady – about 45% of U.S. online buying happens on phones and this share rises every year. In North America plus Europe, some stick with computers (perhaps for larger displays or habit) but younger buyers mostly use phone apps to shop. In Asia, mobile wallets like WeChat or Alipay help make shopping on phones very simple, while Western areas now use tools like Apple Pay and Google Pay.
One clear trend is the choice between apps and websites on a mobile phone: many buyers choose apps because they work better. In areas like China and the UK, many mobile purchases are on apps (for example, 65% of China’s mobile purchases are on apps vs nearly half of the UK’s mobile purchases are on apps). More than 60% of buyers say they choose to shop on mobile apps over websites because apps let them move around better in addition to being able to use extra features easily. Stores that build a fast, smooth app often earn more sales and loyalty from mobile phone shoppers.
Growth of Mobile Payments & Services:
Phone-friendly tools like QR code payments, one-click buying along with fingerprint or face checks on phones make buying simple and safe, which leads to more phone spending.
This behaviour sometimes named “showrooming” or “webrooming,” leads stores to add phone touchpoints (like scanning a product’s QR code in the store for more details or using store apps to find items and check stock).
Payment Trends
Preferred Payment Methods (Global Overview):
As online shopping grew, ways to pay changed. Around the world people favour digital wallets over credit cards now. In 2023 mobile and digital wallets (such as PayPal, Alipay along with Apple Pay) made up about 49–50% of online transaction volume – roughly half of all payments online. Experts expect this number to grow reaching around 54% by 2026. By 2025 more than 5.2 billion people use digital wallets and these wallets account for over 60% of all global eCommerce payments by value. This shift shows that shoppers choose digital wallets because they are fast, simple (with saved card details or a direct bank link) and they provide extra security.
Credit and debit cards remain the second-highest method around the world, especially in North America and parts of Europe. For example in the U.S. about 58% of online orders use cards, while 26% use digital wallets. In Europe, many markets follow similar trends, although countries like the UK now show digital wallets at 28% compared to cards at 52%. In some places bank transfers and cash on delivery still matter (for example, bank transfers serve 13% of online orders in Germany and cash on delivery stays common in certain parts of Asia and the Middle East where prepayment is less trusted).
Customers now shift away from cash and traditional cards moving toward digital-first options. Other emerging methods include buy now, pay later along with cryptocurrency, though crypto remains a small part of the market. In China, digital wallets (like Alipay in addition to WeChat Pay) cover about 59% of online orders, while credit cards play a smaller role. Every region shows its own unique tastes – Latin America likes vouchers and paying in parts, Europe uses local systems (such as iDEAL in the Netherlands besides Klarna in the Nordics) and Africa resorts to mobile money like M-Pesa in some areas. On the seller side offering many digital wallets is normal now: from PayPal (with over 400 million accounts) to Apple Pay (popular in the US with 92% of mobile payments there), Google Pay, Samsung Pay along with local ones like Alipay/WeChat Pay in China and PhonePe/Paytm in India.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL):
A key trend recently is the rise of buy now, pay later. This method lets shoppers divide purchases into parts (often without extra cost) at checkout. Its use grew fast mainly among younger buyers who prefer it over credit cards. BNPL is the fifth most common online payment method worldwide. In 2023 transactions using BNPL reached about $309 billion and may grow to $481 billion by 2025 – a large increase in only two years. By 2026 BNPL may handle over $565 billion showing strong annual progress.
People pick BNPL because it offers a simple, flexible way to pay; nearly half of users choose it because of its ease, budget control next to the fact that no extra interest comes. Well-known BNPL providers include PayPal Credit (used by 57% of BNPL shoppers), Afterpay, Klarna along with Affirm. Use is higher in markets like Australia, where almost 40% of shoppers have tried BNPL and also in parts of Europe like Sweden, where Klarna started. In the U.S., around one in five shoppers have used BNPL, though there are concerns since about 18% have skipped a payment. Sellers use BNPL because it helps increase sales and order sizes; more buyers may choose to buy when they can break the cost into parts. By 2024 about 37% of U.S. online stores used BNPL, up from 27% in 2022 and similar growth appears around the world.
Although BNPL carries risks such as rising consumer debt and more regulatory checks, it remains a favoured choice, particularly for large expenses like electronics or fashion – in fact, almost half of users globally use it to shop for clothes, shoes or accessories.
Cryptocurrencies in eCommerce:
Crypto as a way to pay online has drawn much media attention, yet few shoppers use it as of 2025. Many large online stores have tested payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum or stablecoins as well as more payment services now change crypto into regular money for sellers. Crypto payments make up less than 0.5% of global online sales. In one study private cryptocurrencies and stablecoins ran at about 0.2% of online payments, a very small share. This low use comes from issues like price swings that trouble both buyers and sellers, unclear rules, tax matters next to the fact that people treat crypto more like an investment than spending cash. More sellers accept crypto slowly. In the U.S., about 37% of online businesses accepted crypto by 2024, up from 27% two years before. This shows that sellers try to offer crypto as an option, even if few customers choose it. Stablecoins – crypto tokens tied to regular money – help reduce price swing worries and might boost crypto payments later on. Some large payment companies now let shoppers pay with crypto (for example, PayPal in addition to Visa handle crypto transactions) and shoppers in countries with unstable local money sometimes use crypto for purchases abroad.
But overall using crypto in online shopping stays rare in 2025 and its rise depends a lot on rules and the common use of digital money in everyday tasks. Most buyers still choose simpler methods like cards or cash apps. One report from the industry said that even though more online shops now take crypto, it remains “uncommon compared to other ways to pay” and will not soon replace cards or cash apps.
Technological Innovations in eCommerce
Tech plays a key role in online shopping besides keeps changing the way we buy. In 2025 some new ideas stand out:
AI-Powered Personalization and Automation
Digital intelligence now plays a big part in online shopping. Retailers use AI to tailor the shopping experience to each customer, make better suggestions, set prices right, manage stock as well as handle customer help without human work. The effect is strong: research shows that personalized product suggestions (often made by AI) bring in about 30% of an online store’s income by helping people find useful products and add more items to their carts. AI tools (like those at Amazon or Netflix) look at browsing or buying habits to suggest products, which lifts both conversion rates and the amount spent on each order. In fact AI may multiply conversion rates by up to 3 times and raise sales per customer by 25–30% by offering extra items or matching similar products. Because of these gains, more online shops now use AI: about 51% of global eCommerce businesses already use some type of AI and 84% either use it or see it as very important.
The market for AI tools in online shopping (software and services) stands at around $8.65 billion in 2025 and may double by 2030 showing strong investment in this field.
Key uses of AI in online stores include:
Chatbots in addition to Virtual Assistants:
Nearly 80% of online sellers use or plan to use AI chatbots to help customers. These chatbots answer common questions day and night, from order tracking to product details, which cuts down on the work for human staff. By 2025 AI is expected to handle 85% of customer help tasks through automated chats, voice bots next to similar tools, which gives quick answers and lets human agents focus on difficult problems. Many people now accept bots as they have grown better at conversation.
Inventory and Supply Chain Adjustment:
AI tools look at sales records, seasonal trends next to outside factors to guess future demand. This helps stores keep enough popular items and avoid too many or too few stocks. Around 52% of sellers say AI will help them plan for demand. AI also changes prices based on stock amounts, what competitors charge along with buyer actions, which boosts sales and profits even more.
Visual in addition to Voice Search:
AI that understands pictures lets buyers search for items by showing a photo (for example, to find a similar dress or piece of furniture). Some sellers use this to help buyers explore products. Tools that understand everyday speech help improve searches on sites; 54% of sellers expect AI to make search work better.
Fraud Detection:
Behind the scenes, AI watches transactions as they happen to spot possible fraud or account takeovers, which enhances security. As online fraud grows these methods help find unusual actions in millions of transactions.
Content Creation:
AI now helps with marketing tasks, such as making product descriptions customizing emails for different groups or arranging webpage parts for each buyer. A survey of Amazon marketplace sellers shows that 34% use AI to craft product descriptions and another 14% use it to plan marketing material.
This proves that AI helps sellers grow.
Voice Commerce:
Voice commerce which means using smart speakers or voice helpers to search and shop online is a new but fast-growing area. With devices like Amazon Echo (Alexa), Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri and others becoming popular, many buyers now use voice orders for everyday tasks including shopping. By 2025 experts expect the market for voice-based online shopping to reach about $151.39 billion rising steeply from almost nothing a few years back. Surveys show that about 22% of buyers have ordered directly by speaking and 17% have used voice to order things they had bought before. People commonly use voice to reorder common items, check order progress, add things to a list or ask for item tips and deals. Voice commerce serves well when hands are busy, such as during cooking or driving. In the U.S., about 8% of adults use voice helpers often to order and tens of millions have tried it at least once.
Top sellers have adopted this trend – Amazon led by adding shopping to Alexa. Many brands now offer features or connections for Alexa plus Google Assistant to make voice orders work. For example you may ask a pizza chain’s voice app to send your favorite pizza again or ask a store’s voice app to follow your delivery. Voice search also affects online marketing as people now speak in full questions and online stores adjust their pages to answer these voice questions. Although voice buying is still a small part of online shopping, growth appears strong. Estimates show that global voice-based buying was $80 billion in 2023 and with current views of being around $150 billion in 2025.
One interesting fact is that over 60% of U.S. online buyers say they shop weekly by speaking to their home voice helpers – a sign that active buyers also own these devices, which signals that voice buying grows popular among heavy users. In addition 8 out of 10 buyers who have used voice helpers to order feel pleased with the result, which bodes well for repeat orders.
The future of voice commerce shines as technology gets better. As speech recognition becomes more accurate with the help of AI, buyers may trust an online bot as much as when they shop with their own eyes. We may see more detailed tasks like, “find me a black dress for less than $100 with good reviews” taken completely by voice. Tied together with smart devices (like fridges that order milk when you run low) this marks another new step. For now voice shopping adds to regular browsing – it works well for quick, simple buys – but it will soon join the basic ways of shopping in many channels. Retailers should adjust for voice search and make sure that people can buy their products easily through well-known voice services to keep up with this change.
AR/VR Shopping Experiences:
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) soon change how people check products online by closing the gap between real and digital shopping. Augmented Reality shows digital details or 3D models on top of the real world (mostly with a smartphone camera) and now many online stores let buyers use AR to see how a product might look or fit. For example furniture stores let people view a 3D couch or lamp in their room through their phone and beauty companies let customers test makeup using AR tools. These trials help buyers feel sure about their buy by showing a near-real feel.
The effect on sales and customer happiness is high: 84% of buyers say AR makes shopping better and about 57% will choose stores that offer AR tools. In addition more than 30% of buyers have tried AR when shopping and that number grows each year as smartphones become ready for AR and brands use the tech more. AR makes users stay longer on sites with interactive 3D or AR items and cuts down returns because shoppers get a clearer idea of the product. Studies show that using 3D/AR product views can raise online sales by up to 40% and cut the chance of returns.
The AR market linked to shopping grows fast – one report saw the AR in retail market worth $4 billion in 2023 and predicts it will hit $54.7 billion by 2033, which means a very high annual rise.
Automation in eCommerce Operations:
Behind the rise of eCommerce, a change in using machines and robots is taking place. To meet the need for fast delivery and handle the huge number of online orders, companies use technology to run supply chains and order fulfilment more smoothly.
Warehouse Robotics:
Storage and distribution centres now use more robots that sort, pick and pack items. By 2025 experts guess about 4 million commercial robots will work in over 50,000 warehouses around the globe. These include self-driving mobile robots that carry items around, robotic arms that remove products from shelves or sort packages and systems that sort automatically. Big companies like Amazon lead this trend – Amazon uses hundreds of thousands of robots in its centres to speed up orders. This trend does not only affect large companies; thanks to new robotics firms, even medium-sized warehouses can afford robots. The outcome is faster order handling (some centres work all day and night with little help from people) and fewer mistakes. The global market for warehouse robots, valued around $5.5–6 billion in 2024, should grow to over $6.3 billion in 2025 and keep rising showing how much money flows into this tech.
Automated Order Processing:
Besides physical robots, software now helps move eCommerce tasks forward without manual work. This includes handling payments automatically checking for fraud without manual steps and even talking to customers (like sending order tracking or delay updates through AI without human help.
Delivery Drones and Self-Driving Vehicles:
Drones and self-steering delivery vans are now being tested with hopes to speed up package drop-offs. Firms like Amazon Prime Air in addition to Walmart have tried sending small parcels by drone to cut down on final delivery times in neighbourhoods. Trial programs have managed to bring items such as medicines and groceries to people within 30 minutes. Some expect that by 2025, drone delivery will grow, yet wide use waits on rules from aviation groups in each country and limits on what drones can carry. Delivery robots (wheeled machines that drive on sidewalks or small vans that drive themselves) get tried out in cities and near colleges to take orders to people’s doorsteps. These machines may work all day and night and could lower delivery expenses overall. While these methods are not common, they will likely work along with regular couriers over the next 5-10 years, especially for short deliveries.
Automation in Manufacturing and Sourcing:
Online retailers now try to automate steps before shipping orders. Some use modern production methods like 3D printing to make items when ordered, which cuts down on storage needs. Others use simple machines in production to speed up supply times. Many try to improve supply chains with smart systems that guess demand and change buying plans by themselves. Because of past supply chain problems, companies now put money into technology that makes production closer to home. For example many big firms now build more in North America to depend less on far-off suppliers. They use recent trade deals to get products to customers faster by shortening delivery routes.
Challenges and Risks in eCommerce
Although online shopping shines bright, it deals with many challenges and risks for businesses in 2025:
Security & Fraud:
As online shopping gets larger, so do cyber attacks. Fraud on online sites has grown steadily. Around the world online stores lost over $48 billion to fraud in 2023, compared to about $41 billion in 2022. These losses come from fake payments, money returns for false claims and other scams. Looking ahead experts warn that by 2029, losses from fraud may get to over $107 billion each year if things do not change. Breaches of data remain a big worry – online shop records attract hackers because they hold personal furthermore payment data. Pay attention to how safe their data stays – nearly 70% of consumers in the U.S. worry about privacy and data safety when using online shopping with smart systems. Trust matters in online shopping; any slip can cause customers to leave.
Logistics and Delivery Challenges:
High shipping fees and tangled delivery networks may reduce profit and turn customers away to the competition. Also dealing with returns is a major problem: more items are sent back online than when bought in physical stores, especially in areas such as clothing where sizes may not match well. Return rates often reach 15-30% for apparel bought online. Retailers try different methods to lower returns (for example, better sizing charts, virtual try-ons, clearer product explanations) and to make the returns that occur more straightforward (such as letting customers return online purchases in stores or using local drop-off points).
Supply Chain Disruptions:
The global supply chain troubles that began in the early 2020s showed how exposed eCommerce can be to outside shocks. The pandemic forced factory closures, jammed ports, led to shortages of shipping containers, which caused delivery delays plus empty warehouses in many sectors. Events like trade conflicts, wars as well as natural disasters – worsened by climate change – continued to cause trouble. For instance high inflation in addition to war-related problems in 2022–2023 raised product costs and reduced material availability pushing eCommerce businesses to change prices and buying practices. In 2025 while some pressures have lessened making supply chains strong is a top concern. Retailers now split their supplier base (to avoid relying on one area), boost local or nearby production and store extra stock of important items. Companies that become flexible (by using different sourcing choices and multiple ways to deliver orders) will handle common issues in world trade better.
In summary while the future for online selling is mostly good, success in 2025 and later will depend on how companies handle these issues. Strong safety steps, flexible shipping choices, varied supply sources along with a constant focus on making customers happy all play a part in keeping growth and trust in digital shopping. Those who overcome these setbacks will win customer loyalty and become stronger players in the market.
Shoppers now demand smooth purchasing – personal advice, simple payment methods, fast shipping – and sellers work hard to supply these through AI automation as well as new ways to connect like social in addition to voice shopping. At the same time the industry must deal with its problems, from improving protection against fraud to building strong supply networks besides keeping trust in every step.
The numbers in this guide show both great chances and tough duties that come with a more online buying environment. Going forward online selling will grow faster than regular retail, with new markets adding more buyers and spending. We may see closer links between online and offline shopping through multi-channel models, better AR/VR that makes online buying feel more real and perhaps new ways to shop using the metaverse or AI helpers.
Sources:
sellerscommerce.com
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