The traditional offline payment methods (invoice, prepayment and cash-on-delivery) boosted their share of the German e-commerce market by 0.7% YTY to 6.5% in 2005. This means online shoppers are making less use of the facilities of innovative payment systems than before and are placing even more trust in the systems they have come to appreciate from traditional retailing. German online shoppers make over 90% of their purchases in German shops. In its Germany-wide ranking of transactions, online gambling (average spend EUR 100.34) came out of virtual obscurity to land in third place. This segment trails the retail trade (EUR 26.01) and the telecommunications sector (EUR 3.01), where sales are confined primarily to ringtones.
