SAMA reported that electronic payments represented 85% of total retail payments in 2025, compared with 79% in 2024: a six-percentage-point increase. This measure concerns retail payments, not e-commerce’s share of retail sales.
My reading of the signal
My interpretation: marketers should review the purchase journey alongside the campaign. A strong message needs a clear route through product information, delivery terms and payment. The national statistic does not measure your website’s conversion rate.
A campaign can create attention while the next step remains confusing. Reviewing the full journey means checking what the customer sees before, during and after payment.
Start with your own transactions and support conversations. Separate visitors who never reach checkout from customers who start payment and fail to complete it. These groups may need different interventions.
Document one change, a success measure and a review period. A market signal can help prioritise questions; your operational data should guide the answer.
Questions to turn into action
- Map the steps from campaign to completed purchase.
- Check price, delivery and payment information on mobile.
- Review abandonment by funnel stage using your own data.
- Test one meaningful source of friction at a time.
Desk research using SAMA’s published headline and SPA coverage. No checkout experiment or causal conversion study was conducted. Reviewed 18 October 2026.