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Switzerland climbs to top of global E-commerce index

Switzerland is topping UNCTAD’s Business-to-Consumer E-commerce Index 2020, which ranks 152 countries on their readiness to engage in online commerce.

For the first time, Switzerland leads the B2C E-commerce Index by UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), just ahead of the Netherlands. In 2019, 97% of the Swiss population used the internet. The index scores 152 nations on their readiness for online shopping, worth an estimated $4.4 trillion globally in 2018, up 7% from the previous year.

Countries are scored on access to secure internet servers, reliability of postal services and infrastructure, and the portion of their population that uses the internet and has an account with a financial institution or a provider of mobile money services.

When you are active in the B2C business, Switzerland is clearly an interesting market for your products and services! However, do not underestimate the Swiss market, due to its complexity (non-EU country, local preferences, different linguistic regions). Need advice or assistance? Contact us!

(Source: UNCTAD dd 17.02.2021: https://unctad.org/webflyer/unctad-b2c-e-commerce-index-2020-spotlight-latin-america-and-caribbean)

Why Switzerland is number one?

The Confederation scores highly across all four dimensions of the 2020 UNCTAD B2C e-commerce index.

  • Most of the Swiss population uses the Internet. According to Eurostat, 97 per cent of the population used the Internet in 2019.
  • Switzerland has high banking coverage, ranking 11th in the world by the density of bank branches. The 2017 Findex survey found that 98 per cent of the population aged 15 and older had an account, placing it 12th in the world.
  • The country ranks 5th among the countries included in the index in secure server density, a proxy for online shops in the country. According to the Swiss Distance Selling Association (ASVAD), there were at least 250 web shops with online sales in the country in 2019. Linguistic affinity also means that the Swiss can easily shop from online stores available in the German, French and Italian languages.
  • Switzerland ranks 7th in the world in terms of postal reliability according to the UPU and number one for overall postal development. Statistics from the postal regulator indicate that 99.9 per cent of households have home delivery; 95 per cent of priority packages are delivered within one working day and 96 per cent of other packages within two days; and all of the population is within a twenty minutes’ walk or public transport trip to a postal office. Increased online shopping due to the coronavirus broke records for parcel delivery with the Swiss Post delivering 183 million packages in 2020, up 23 per cent over the previous year.