Online retail now accounts for over a fifth of all global retail sales, with digital wallets set to handle the majority of checkout volume.
Global E-Commerce Sales Set to Hit $6.88 Trillion in 2026
Global retail e-commerce sales are projected to reach $6.88 trillion in 2026, 21.5% of total retail sales worldwide. New data shows digital wallets and mobile transactions driving the majority of online checkout volume.
E-commerce's share of global retail keeps climbing steadily rather than explosively in 2026 — but the underlying shift in how people pay for it is moving faster than the topline growth number suggests.
The topline numbers
Global retail e-commerce sales are projected to reach $6.88 trillion in 2026, up 7.2% from the prior year. Set against total global retail sales of roughly $33.7 trillion, online retail now represents 21.5% of all retail spending worldwide — meaning e-commerce has moved decisively past "growing channel" status into representing more than a fifth of all retail commerce on the planet.
On the buyer side, the number of global digital buyers is estimated at 2.86 billion in 2026 — a figure that puts online shopping penetration at roughly a third of the world's total population, and well over half of the world's internet-connected population.
Mobile and wallets are eating checkout
Two structural shifts sit underneath the topline growth rate. First, mobile transactions are projected to drive 60–74% of all global e-commerce traffic in 2026 — meaning for most online retailers, mobile is no longer a secondary channel to optimize for; it's the primary one. Second, payment method is shifting just as fast: digital wallets are expected to handle between 51.7% and 61% of all global e-commerce payment volume by 2026, overtaking traditional card-entry checkout as the default.
Separately, the global B2B e-commerce market — a category often overshadowed by consumer retail headlines — is projected to grow to $36.16 trillion by 2026, dwarfing the B2C figure and underscoring that most of the dollar volume moving through "e-commerce" infrastructure is business-to-business, not consumer shopping.
Why this matters
For merchants and payment providers, the practical read is that checkout optimization in 2026 is fundamentally a mobile-and-wallet problem, not a desktop-and-card one. A checkout flow still optimized primarily for card-entry on desktop is now optimizing for a shrinking minority of transaction volume.
Sources
Global Retail E-Commerce Sales, Forrester, eCommerce Statistics 2026, Capital One Shopping Research, 70 Latest e-commerce statistics, WiserReview.
Frequently asked questions
E-commerce is projected to account for 21.5% of total global retail sales in 2026, out of an estimated $33.7 trillion in total retail sales worldwide — meaning roughly one in five retail dollars now flows through an online transaction.
The number of global digital buyers is estimated to reach 2.86 billion in 2026, meaning roughly a third of the world's population makes at least one online purchase during the year.
Digital wallets, which are expected to handle between 51.7% and 61% of all global e-commerce payment volume by 2026, ahead of cards and other payment methods.