Best and Worst Online Payment Options in the UK

PayPal Only Accepted in 17%, Google Checkout, only 5%

London, UK, Nov. 18, 2008 -- According to the ShopSpree, a directory of online shops that accept Visa Electron, Solo, PayPal, Maestro cards, the most accepted credit cards online are Visa Card, MasterCard and Maestro card.

Shopspree conducted this survey on more than 400 UK-based online shops to find out which credit or debit cards or forms of payment the shops accept. The research found out that 100% of the shops accept Visa card, 99% accept MasterCard and 76% accept Maestro card in online payments. Other interesting finding is the low acceptance rates of American Express, Visa Electron and JCB cards online, although these cards are popularly used by millions of consumers.

Although most of the online shops claim that they accept major cards online, only 45% of them accept American Express, 42% accept Visa Electron and 18% accept JCB cards in online payments. The low level of acceptance of these cards can be explained by the fact that these cards are given to people with lower credit rate like foreigners or students.

The survey also included the online acceptance rates of other digital payment options such as PayPal and Google Checkout and found out that only 17% of the shops accepted PayPal online and only 5% accepted Google Checkout. This is rather interesting as PayPal and Google Checkout have got growing numbers of users, but the online shops have not followed this trend.

Shopspree conducted this survey in order to categorize the online shops according the type of payment option accepted. For further information about the survey, please see best credit cards in the UK.

Source: Company press release.