Study Reveals Most Popular Online Payment Methods Worldwide

We don’t have to point out that online payments have taken off quite a bit in the past decade or so. The pandemic and lockdowns only made this even more noticeable, leading to a massive surge in popularity for payment services of all shapes and sizes.

A recent American study revealed the most popular options in over 100 countries. Here are the results.

Top 5 Biggest Payment Methods Online

The study, which you can find here, used BuiltWith, a tool that tracks payment methods in the top one million biggest merchant sites in the world. In other words, it’s a huge sample size, giving us reliable insight into how people pay online.

Here are the top 5 most popular methods according to the study:

• PayPal
• Visa
• MasterCard
• American Express
• Apple Pay

Importantly, consumer behavior varies highly from country to country. For example, Visa is the most popular option throughout Eastern Europe and South America, while PayPal maintains a strong foothold in North America and Central Europe.

However, based on the sheer number of payments made using a single method, PayPal is by far the most common choice. Apparently, over 20.50% of all online transactions are completed via Paypal. Visa, ranked just below, trails far behind at 15.67%

What This Tells Us About Online Payments

It seems that credit/debit cards remain the go-to method for paying for goods and services online. No surprises there – almost everyone has a debit card (or several) these days.

We were more surprised by just how much more popular they are, though. Three of the top 5 options are debit cards, with almost 35% of the market between them.

Also, it’s interesting to note that Visa is more widespread than the market leader PayPal. According to the data, Visa holds the top spot in 67 countries, while PayPal ranks highest in 63.

That said, e-wallets have been growing in popularity for years now. They’re expected to keep growing in the future. Whether that involves PayPal increasing its dominance or new competitors, we can’t say.