Turkish consumers still don't trust e-trade, PayPal director says

by Tuncay Kayaoglu / Esra Kaymak

ISTANBUL (AA) – What is keeping Turkey's e-trade business from expanding is the consumers lack of trust in ordering on the internet says Kivanc Onan, Turkey’s Director of PayPal - global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet.

 Onan says they are focussing their attention on educating small and medium enterprises in e-commerce and how to increase their online security. “SMEs must be supported both in logistics and know-how,” he stressed adding that the support of the government in this area is vital.

Despite the fact that e-trading volume is up nearly 40 percent in first nine months of 2013 when compared to the same period last year some people still hesitate to share their credit card data online.

“Turkey is ahead in e-trade when compared to other countries such as the Middle East and Russia,” said Onan adding that the trade for this period was vaiued at 25 billion dollars and predicts the sector would be worth 35 billion Turkish liras in the coming year.

President of Electronic Trade Managers Association (ETID) Hakan Orhun told AA, “people have adopted this business model, where they choose the products via computers, their mobile phones or tablet computers in an easy way and find them delivered to their addresses,” Akgun added. “The number of entrepreneurs and products has increased recently, which also increased the trust of the consumer.”

Sadik Haluk Kaya, a customer, who prefers to buy mostly electronic items via e-trade, stated "books or electronic items are the same for everybody and these are safe to buy, but not clothes or watches."

Adding the most important point was security for him, Kaya noted he was afraid of that his credit card would be hacked, if he shared the information of the card while buying the products via Internet.

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