Yandex.Checkout on the State of Russian e-commerce in 2019

February 6, 2020

Yandex.Checkout has provided the report on the results of its performance in 2019 as well as the overview of the Russian market overview in 2019 with the breakdown of the dynamics within sectors, changes in customers’ spending preferences, and the expansion of the alternative payment products.

Yandex.Checkout’s net revenue has increased by 30% compared to 2018, with most additions coming from the mass market segment. As of now, Yandex.Checkout serves more than 120 thousand merchants from 75 countries.

MARKET SHARE

According to a DataInsight study, the overall share of e-commerce trade in Russia GDP in 2019 accounted only for 1.3% with $30.6B B2C trade market evaluation. A recent PWC study reports that Russia shows one of the highest growth rates of online shopping. 71% of Russian customers shop online at least once a month and 79% of them use smartphones for online shopping. Analysts from Yandex.Checkout report that 44% of payments were conducted from mobile devices, and the number has seen an increase of up to 5% in the recent years.

Yandex.Checkout serves from 30% to 50% merchants in segments of paid content, charity, education, media, and advertising; from 20% to 30% merchants in social media and gaming; from 10% to 20% in telecommunications, software, goods on delivery, and internet hosting. According to the global research group MARC, Yandex.Checkout is the most popular PSP in Russia with 37.6% market share.

INDUSTRY SPLIT

The fastest growing segment by revenue was paid content (104% increase) with 137% spike in the number of transactions. Tourism has grown by 90% in revenue and 42% in the number of transactions. Beauty segment has increased by 58% by revenue and 41% in the number of transactions.

Advertising has seen 32% in revenue growth and 49% in the number of transactions, while apparel and shoewear have grown by 24% and 16% by the number of transactions. Food&FMCG has grown by 14% in revenue and 17% by the number of transactions. The gaming industry has grown by 15% in revenue (yet has doubled in the past 5 years) and by 14% in the number of transactions. Autoparts shops have demonstrated the slowest growth of 4%, yet a 26% increase in the number of transactions.

The average transaction has grown only in the tourism (34% and stands at 19,844 rubles or $330), beauty (12% and stands at 3,572 rubles or $60), and apparel and shoewear segments (7% and stands at 847 rubles or $14).

The rest of the analyzed industries reported a decline in the average transaction: gaming sector decreased by 3% to around $7.5 (452 rubles); advertising by 12% to $6.7 (400 rubles); paid content segment by 14% to $17.5 (1,052 rubles); autoparts by 17% to $66 (3,968 rubles). The slight reduction of average transaction was reported in the food&FMCG segment (-2%), now accounting for $9 (519 rubles).

Among all payments conducted on Yandex.Checkout merchants’ websites in 2019, the method used most often was bank cards with 81%. Interestingly, card payments by the number of transactions increased by 30% and by the revenue up to 37%. 9% of all transactions were conducted via e-wallets, demonstrating a 6% growth both in number of transactions and revenue. Invoicing also accounts for 9% of payment methods with a 24% growth in the number of transactions and 10% growth in revenue.

NEW PRODUCTS PERFORMANCE

ePayments continue to evolve as targeted and customized financial instruments, focusing on conversion rate increase. Thus, alternative methods and scenarios were massively welcomed by merchants and demonstrated better-than-expected results.

In late 2018, Yandex.Checkout introduced installment payments. The store can select a program for a period of 3 to 6 months, 6 or 12 months. The grace period for loan repayment is 30 days, but it can be extended to up to 120 days. The decision on the customer’s loan application is made in a few minutes. The repayments are made with the Yandex.Money e-wallet: the service automatically debits the amount of the next payment. The user can make a full repayment on the loan ahead of schedule, and view how many payments have already been made as well as the amount left to pay. 2019 has proved the demand for this option - over 10 thousand stores provide the option to pay on an installment plan. The product demonstrates 25% growth in the number of merchants and adds almost 40% in revenue.

B2B payments were designed to allow companies to accept online payments from corporate clients as easily as from individuals. That option was particularly welcomed by travel companies, telecom operators, recruiting services, commodity sector enterprises, IT companies. The number of transactions and revenue has demonstrated unprecedented growth of 40% each month.

WeChat Pay was also introduced in 2018, and throughout the year was upgraded to both offline and online payment methods. The number of payments via WeChat Pay saw an average monthly increase of 20% with July, August, and December showing the largest growth in turnover and the number of transactions. The average check stands at around ¥ 560 (around 5,000 rubles) throughout the year with a spike to ¥ 840 (around 7,500 rubles) in December. The aforementioned statistics correlate with the general traveling trends among Chinese tourists.

“As per results of 2019, the Russian market drives attention from companies from the US to China. Growth within different segments is expected to continue, so it’s the right time to enter the market. Key operating highlights of 2019 reflect our objective of not only providing all the popular payment methods, but also adjusting it to the greatest benefit of our merchants,” said Ivan Glazachev, CEO at Yandex.Money.

About Yandex.Checkout

Yandex.Checkout is the leading service for accepting online payments in Russia, according to a 2019 survey by MARC. Yandex.Checkout received the Best PSP Award in 2019 and the Emerging Payment Award in 2017 at the Merchant Payments Ecosystem conference (Berlin). With this payment solution, merchants from all over the world can offer Russian consumers the online payment methods most popular among Russians and CIS-citizens: bank cards, e-wallets, mobile phones, cash via mobile retailers and payment kiosks (there are over 250K cash-acceptance points all over CIS). Currently, more than 120K online stores across the globe use Yandex.Checkout.
Yandex.Checkout was launched by Yandex.Money in 2013. Yandex.Money is the joint venture of search engine Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX), and Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia.