Ecommerce has increased fourfold over the last 5 years in Mexico, but despite this online sales still only account for 2% of all retail sales in the country.
Mexican internet users are wary about making online payments and are therefore largely refraining from using online shopping sites, and are often using cash-on-delivery payment options if they do engage in ecommerce.
Rather than fighting this reluctance to pay online, many big name companies are instead developing their own offline payment options to ease customers' fears.
For example, the ecommerce giant Amazon partnered up with the Mexican convenience store Oxxo last year, meaning that users could buy Amazon gift cards for cash in Oxxo stores.
A rival online store, Linio, announced that it would accept a variety of payment options, including credit and debit cards, PayPal, cash payments in Oxxo stores and cash-on-delivery.
MercadoLibre also allows users to pay for items at Oxxo and other physical stores, and also developed its own online payments system MercadoPago, which operates in a similar fashion to PayPal.Â
