While Belgium is situated near countries with strong ecommerce markets such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, the ecommerce market is still quite small in this country. In recent years, the Belgian government has implemented new laws to make the country more attractive for online stores.

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Ecommerce customers in Belgium

While Belgian ecommerce lagged behind the online markets in other European countries, it is now continuing to grow. In 2022, a majority of almost 75 percent of Belgian consumers shopped online. That amount seems to continue growing, as research in 2023 showed that nine out of ten Belgians aged 18 to 70 shopped online at least once.

GENERAL PROFILE – It can be difficult for new online stores to generate a customer base in Belgium, as consumers in the country tend to return to familiar online stores. At least 33 percent of Belgian consumers said that they have one online store they always return to when buying online. And another 40 percent return to the same three online stores.

In 2023, research indicated that 50 percent of Belgian online shoppers do this on online marketplaces like Bol or Amazon. However, 23 percent start their product search on Google. Another 15 percent start on a marketplace and 11 percent immediately go to an online store to look for products.

Bancontact is the most popular online payment method in Belgium

PREFERRED PAYMENT METHODS – Belgian customers prefer local online payment method Bancontact when shopping online. According to Statista, Bancontact had a market share of 78 percent in 2022 in Belgium. It is followed by credit cards such as Mastercard and Visa.

CROSS-BORDER – In 2023, Belgian consumers spent 5.5 billion euros on on online stores or marketplaces based in other countries. If you want to start selling your products to consumers in this country, consider becoming active on an international marketplace like Amazon or Bol.

Looking for ecommerce software to start selling in Europe? Webador and Shopify are platforms that are well optimized for cross-border ecommerce.

The ecommerce market in Belgium

In 2023, approximately a quarter of all spending in Belgium happened online. That year, consumers in the country spent 16.3 billion euros online. This was an increase of almost 11 percent compared to 2022. In total, there were 63,202 registered online stores in the country that year.

Online turnover increased 11% from 2022 to 2023.

Compared to 2019, 4.8 billion euros more were spent online in 2023. This shows that the ecommerce market in Belgium is continuing to grow. The growth in 2023 was mostly caused by an increase in online spending on services. In total, Belgians spent 8 billion euros on services, like tickets for concerts and package holidays. Almost 68 percent of all services in the country were bought online in that year.

PRODUCT CATEGORIES – In 2023, Belgians spent 28 percent more on package holidays online than a year before. They spent 3.5 billion euros on this category. This was the top category in online spending. In second place was purchases of airline tickets and accommodations (2.1 billion euros, an increase of 19 percent). Clothing came in third place, with 1.6 billion euros. This was a slight decrease of 1.8 percent.

Strict rules in Belgium

In February 2022, the Belgian government announced that it was considering labor market reform measures. The reforms would enable ecommerce businesses to work between 20:00 and midnight. This would give the ecommerce market the opportunity to catch up with other countries, where night work is already allowed. In July that year, the law was changed and night work is now allowed in Belgium.

Since 2022, night work is allowed in Belgium.

Since then, Belgian ecommerce is slowly catching up with the rest of Europe. Belgian trade association BeCommerce launched a project to give online retailers coaching sessions, in an effort to help Belgian SME’s grow their online presence. In 2022, ecommerce represented 16.7 percent of all SME sales. And 28.1 percent of all SME’s in Belgium sold online that year.

Do you want to sell cross-border in Europe? It ain’t easy but with the right ecommerce software, online marketing channels and European fulfillment companies market leadership is surely possible.

Big online stores in Belgium

The Belgian ecommerce market is largely dominated by big online players from abroad, like Zalando (Germany), Amazon (United States) or Bol and Coolblue (both from the Netherlands). But there are also a few well-known Belgian online retailers, like Vanden Borre, ZEB, Schoenen Torfs and Bel&Bo.

Every year there are several ecommerce events that take place in Belgium. We have a handy ecommerce events calendar where you can find all the major online retail events in Europe.

Read all our articles about ecommerce in Belgium.