Report: More young Indians shop online for overseas products

More young Indians in 18-34 age group are shopping online for cross-border products like apparel and consumer electronics owing to their higher quality despite payment barriers, a report said on Wednesday.
“Our research showed that more (59 per cent) of millennials (young) choose cross-border products like apparel and consumer electronics for their higher quality,” a joint study by global online payment gateway PayPal and leading market research firm Ipsos noted.
The ‘PayPal Cross Border 2015 Millennial’ report is based on a survey of online and cross-border shopping habits of 23,000 internet users in 29 countries, including 517 millennials in India.
Around 85 per cent of millennials prefer global online stores like Amazon for shopping online for cross-border products.
“Nearly 79 per cent of Indian millennials shop for event tickets online,” the report said.
The US continues to be the most preferred nation for cross-border shopping followed by China, Britain and Singapore.
Making online payments has emerged as one of the key aspects of cross-border purchases though young shoppers thriving on options prefer paying in currency of their choice.
“Cross-border shopping is hindered by high delivery shipping costs, difficult return process, unclear duty and tax structures, long delivery times, unfavourable conversion rates and payment option only in foreign currencies,” the report highlighted.
About 60 per cent of millennials, however, are not comfortable with purchasing on websites that are not in their language and 82 per cent of them prefer paying in local or their own currency.
Mapping the evolution of online cross-border commerce among young Indians, the report identifies factors that drive them to buy across the border, barriers they face and their approach to making overseas payments online.
In light of the findings and its focus on the millennial segment, PayPal will soon roll out promotions and programmes for the millennials to experience how new money means no boundaries.
“As we are focussed on enabling digital payments in a safe and secure environment, our ‘New Money’ facility caters to the millennials, encouraging them to switch over to the new option,” said Anupam Pahuja, Country Manager and Managing Director, PayPal India, on the report.
The New Money caters to consumers as well as merchants while ‘PayPal.me’ is a personalised option for merchants to receive cross-border payments.
“A safer payment option takes priority over other factors, including discounts, which makes us a preferred payment option in view of our focus on risk and security,” added Pahuja.
With 184-million active customer accounts worldwide, the US-based PayPal Holdings Inc., operates in 200 countries, enabling payments in over 100 currencies, withdraw funds to their bank accounts in 57 currencies and hold balances in PayPal accounts in 26 currencies.
In 2015, 28 per cent of the 4.9-billion payments processed were made on a mobile device.