NEW YORK — The United States has one of the oldest spending profiles in digital commerce in the world. Data developed by World Data Lab and published with exclusivity in EBANX’s Beyond Borders 2026 report shows that American consumers over 45 years old account for 50% of the total value of all online purchases in the country. And that proportion is only going to increase, since the only age group projected to grow its share over the next decade is the 65+ segment, rising from 19% to 23%. By 2035, the over-45 cohort will represent 54% of all digital transactions. The closest parallels today are all developed economies: Japan (60%), Italy (60%), South Korea (55%), Germany (54%), France (54%), the Netherlands (50%), Canada (50%), and the United Kingdom (49%).
That reality stands in contrast to emerging markets, the fastest-growing economies on the planet. Across most of the countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, e-commerce is dominated by younger buyers. Consumers under 30 drive 65% of online spending in Nigeria, 62% in Kenya, 52% in Egypt, 51% in the Philippines, 47% in India, and 44% in Malaysia. In Latin America, the distribution is more balanced, but younger cohorts still claim a larger share in Mexico (41%), Argentina (34%), and Brazil (32%) than they do in the United States (26%).
“The world's largest economies built their digital commerce on cards, high disposable income, and decades of retail maturity — a system shaped by consumers who were already adults when e-commerce began,” explained Estelita Hass, Head of Market Intelligence at EBANX. “Most emerging markets leapfrogged that cycle entirely, going straight to mobile and instant payments. The result is an entire generation entering online commerce with no attachment to traditional retail, fully digital from the start of their consumption lives.”
That approach has proven so effective that e-commerce now occupies a larger share of consumer life in most of these economies than it does in the United States, where online channels account for just 9.1% of total household spending. In India, digital purchases already capture 22% of all expenditure, trailing only China (63.4%) and South Korea (23.5%) and just ahead of Indonesia (19.8%). The highest figures in Africa and Latin America belong to Nigeria (15%) and Brazil (11.5%).
And the distance is only growing. Consumer spending in emerging markets is projected to rise 94% over the next decade, nearly double the 49% expected in developed economies. Southeast Asia and India alone are on track for 147% growth, compared to 52% in the United States.
Beyond the acceleration of existing demand, these regions are also adding entirely new buyers at a pace that mature markets cannot match. Over the next ten years, more than one billion people in emerging economies are expected to cross the USD 13-per-day threshold that defines the consumer class based on the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method — a 32% expansion. In developed markets, the equivalent gain is 28 million people, a growth rate of just 3%. Of that total, 16.2 million are in the United States.
“This is the defining asymmetry of global digital commerce today,” said Hass. “The developed economies are deep but narrow, with high spending concentrated among an older, affluent base. Emerging markets are broad and getting broader, with lower average tickets but a consumer pool that is expanding exponentially.”
The spending divide
Who shops online is, in many ways, a reflection of how each market was built — and the spending profile is just as revealing as the generational one. According to EBANX’s Beyond Borders 2026 report, 84% of American online spending is driven by Rich and Upper Middle Class consumers, those spending more than USD 90 a day. That's the highest level of concentration among the 184 countries analyzed, and is expected to reach 88% by 2035. Meanwhile, the share held by Core Middle and Lower Middle segments, defined by daily spending between USD 13 and USD 90, is projected to shrink from 15% to 12% in the same period.
In emerging markets, expansion is fueled not by the wealthy but by the broad consumer base. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, an average of 53 cents of every dollar spent in e-commerce comes from Core Middle and Lower Middle buyers. Among the countries where these two segments hold the largest share are Vietnam (86%), Thailand (80%), Nigeria (78%), Peru (75%), the Philippines (72%), India (72%), Kenya (71%), Brazil (59%), and Colombia (57%).
“The strong concentration of online spending among the middle class traces back to financial inclusion and the digitalization of payments that these economies have undergone in recent years,” noted Hass. “Pix in Brazil, UPI in India, mobile money in Africa, and e-wallets across all of these regions gave the broader population access to many products and services that until then had been reserved for credit card holders — in other words, the wealthy.”
In practice, that shift is rewriting the payment mix of e-commerce in real time. Account-to-account transfers (A2A) already make up 60% of all online transactions in India and 45% in Brazil, where the share is expected to reach 50% by 2028, according to Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence (PCMI) data analyzed by EBANX. In Colombia, A2A is projected to overtake cards by 2027, followed by Nigeria and the Philippines in 2028. Globally, the share of A2A in total digital payments jumped from 13% in 2020 to 25% in 2024 and is expected to reach 32% by 2029. Pix and UPI alone are expected to move USD 318.5 billion combined in 2026, just in e-commerce.
“The data in our report paints a consistent picture across both age and spending: the digital consumer that American and European companies know at home — older, affluent, card-native — is an outlier in the global landscape,” added Estelita Hass. “The vast majority of the world's online buyers are younger, earn less, and pay differently. They are entering the digital marketplace for the first time, and they are doing so on their own terms. A strategy built for the U.S. and Europe is a strategy built for a fraction of the global market. The rest requires a different playbook entirely.”
