Across Europe, 56% of companies use four of the 12 digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and e-commerce sales.
Romanian entrepreneurs who have made technology development a priority have been more focused on online commerce, where the results match the investment.
Over six million online shoppers
Raluca Radu, online shop representative: “If 7 years ago we were starting from a static website, now our website looks different depending on the customer accessing it. In Romania, we started from a market with a small number of online shoppers and today we have more than six million shoppers.”
Travel businesses that sold online grossed a total of $1.4 billion, according to a 2021 report. A billion dollars was also almost made in the beauty industry through online payments.
Online payment, a pandemic habit
Cosmin Daraban, e-commerce specialist: “The adoption of online payment has grown a lot in the pandemic, because the saying goes that you couldn’t help but order and pay online. It went down a bit after the pandemic ended, but it was still higher than it was before.”
Nationwide, more than eight million Romanians make digital transactions worth more than $4 billion every year. This is up 20% from 2020.
And most Romanians want to pay digitally at the market, when they go by taxi and to beauty salons. But that would mean investment in digitisation by the companies operating in these areas.
Funds to educate employees
In order to make investments, the state is making funds available to businesses through the National Recovery Plan. €36 million for firms to educate employees in new areas and €500 million for digitising small and medium-sized enterprises.
Sebastian Burduja, Minister for Digitisation: “There are Romanian companies that are reluctant to bring in new technologies or train their employees who have become accustomed to performing with old systems, which are not always digitised. The digital transformation of an economy takes 8-10 years, as examples from other countries in the region show.”
In the European Union, businesses in Finland, Denmark, Malta and Sweden are doing best in terms of digital technology, according to Eurostat.
Perhaps with time romanian companies and romanians in general will understand that is impotant to use a debit/credit card and also to make online payments as well.
