E-commerce Invoicing 2026: $6.42 Trillion in Sales [Data]

Global retail e-commerce sales reached $6.42 trillion in 2025 and are on track for $6.88 trillion in 2026, according to eMarketer’s forecast. Every one of those transactions still needs a document behind it: an order confirmation, a receipt, and for a growing share of B2B sellers, a real invoice. This data set covers how big e-commerce invoicing volume actually is, how shoppers pay, how often orders come back, and what that means for the systems businesses use to bill online.

How big is global e-commerce heading into 2026?

E-commerce crossed $6.42 trillion in worldwide retail sales in 2025, up 6.8% year over year, the slowest growth pace since 2022, according to eMarketer’s February 2025 forecast. That put online sales at 20.5% of total global retail spending, up from 19.9% the year before. eMarketer’s own forward estimate has that figure climbing to $6.88 trillion in 2026, meaning roughly one in five retail dollars worldwide will change hands online, each one needing a receipt, an order record, or an invoice on the seller’s side of the transaction.

Figure 1: Global retail e-commerce sales, 2025 vs the 2026 forecast. Source: eMarketer, February 2025 forecast.

How are online shoppers actually paying at checkout?

Card payments no longer dominate e-commerce checkout the way they once did. Digital wallets, think stored-card wallets and app-based pay buttons, now account for 56% of global e-commerce transaction value, ahead of credit cards at 20%, debit cards at 10%, account-to-account transfers at 7%, and buy now, pay later at 4%, according to Worldpay’s Global Payments Report, based on a survey of more than 63,000 consumers across 42 markets. For a seller building invoices or checkout pages, that means the payment method a customer expects to see first has already flipped from card entry to a one-tap wallet button.

That shift matters for how an invoice or payment link gets built, not just how a storefront checkout looks. A B2C order might settle instantly through a wallet, but a B2B order invoiced after the fact still needs to offer the same range of methods the buyer already uses everywhere else, or the payment simply stalls. Buy now, pay later sits at a modest 4% of transaction value globally, but it is the fastest-growing line in Worldpay’s data, and it is increasingly showing up as an option on business invoices, not just consumer checkout pages, as sellers try to close the gap between an order and a paid invoice. Account-to-account transfers, direct bank-to-bank payment without a card network in between, hold a steady 7% share and tend to be the preferred rail for larger B2B invoice amounts, where card processing fees on a five-figure order add up quickly.

Figure 2: Share of global e-commerce transaction value by payment method, 2025. Source: Worldpay Global Payments Report.

Is the US behind the rest of the world on digital wallets?

Yes, by a meaningful margin. In the United States, digital wallets account for 40% of e-commerce transaction value, well below the 56% global average, per the same Worldpay research. Card-based payment habits are simply stickier in the US market than in much of Asia-Pacific and Europe, where wallet adoption has moved faster and card networks never built the same decades-long default the way they did in North America. The gap is not a small rounding difference: at 40% versus 56%, US e-commerce sellers are collecting through wallets at a rate roughly 16 percentage points behind where the rest of the world already sits.

The practical takeaway for any business invoicing US customers is that card and wallet options both still need to be front and center on a payment page, rather than assuming a single dominant method the way a seller in a wallet-first market like much of Asia-Pacific could. A US-focused invoice that only supports card payment is closer to matching current buyer behavior than one built for a wallet-first market, but it is also leaving room on the table: 40% of transaction value is still a large enough share that skipping a wallet option costs real, measurable conversion at the payment step, not just a minor convenience gap.

Figure 3: Digital wallet share of e-commerce checkout value, United States vs global average, 2025. Source: Worldpay Global Payments Report.

How often does an e-commerce order come back for a credit note?

Returns are a bigger line item in e-commerce invoicing than most sellers plan for. An estimated 19.3% of online sales were returned in 2025, up from 17.6% in 2024, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report. That is roughly one in five orders needing some kind of adjustment on the seller’s books, whether that is a refund, a replacement, or a credit note tied back to the original invoice. NRF’s data also points to why the trend keeps climbing: 82% of consumers say free returns are an important factor in deciding where to shop online, so sellers keep expanding return windows and no-cost return policies even as the volume of adjustments they process keeps growing alongside it.

For a business running e-commerce invoicing at any real volume, that 19.3% figure is effectively a second document workload sitting on top of the original invoice count. Every returned order needs its own paper trail, distinct from the sale itself, whether that is a formal credit note, a partial refund record, or a reissued invoice reflecting an exchanged item. A seller who only plans invoicing capacity around units sold, without budgeting for the roughly one-in-five that come back, is underestimating total document volume by a meaningful margin.

Figure 4: Share of e-commerce orders returned, 2024 vs 2025. Source: NRF, 2025 Retail Returns Landscape.

How much of that return volume is outright fraud?

Not every return is a legitimate one. NRF’s 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report found that 9% of all retail returns are fraudulent, and the tactics behind that figure are increasingly specific rather than opportunistic. Retailers surveyed for the report reported rising incidence of overstated return quantities, empty-box or “box of rocks” claims, and counterfeit decoy items sent back in place of the genuine product, patterns that are difficult to catch at the point a refund or credit note is issued rather than after the fact.

Retailers are responding with tighter controls rather than absorbing the cost quietly: 85% now say they are deploying AI specifically to detect these patterns before a refund or credit note goes out, according to the same NRF report. For a seller running high return volume, that 9% fraud share is effectively a hidden cost sitting inside every credit note process, one that compounds with the 19.3% overall return rate above it. On a business processing thousands of e-commerce orders a month, the two figures together mean a nontrivial share of total invoicing and credit-note work exists purely to catch and reverse fraudulent claims, not to service genuine buyer remorse or product issues.

Figure 5: Share of all retail returns that are fraudulent, 2025. Source: NRF, 2025 Retail Returns Landscape.

Do B2B buyers actually want to purchase, and get invoiced, online?

Business buyers have caught up to consumer expectations here. 73% of B2B buyers say they prefer purchasing online over traditional sales channels like a phone order or a sales rep, according to Sana Commerce’s B2B Buyer Report 2025. That preference carries straight through to invoicing: a buyer who wants to order online generally expects to see, download, and pay an invoice online too, rather than waiting on a mailed or emailed PDF sitting outside the purchasing flow entirely. For B2B e-commerce sellers, that is a direct case for a self-service invoice and payment link attached to every order, not just a checkout confirmation email.

What does this mean for e-invoicing adoption?

Structured, machine-readable invoicing is growing alongside e-commerce itself. The global e-invoicing market was valued at $18.5 billion in 2025, and IMARC Group’s forecast puts it growing at a compound annual rate of roughly 15.96% through 2034, driven in large part by the expanding e-commerce sector alongside mandatory e-invoicing rules landing across the EU, UK, and elsewhere. Combined with the volume and returns data above, invoice volume tied to online orders is only one part of the picture: late payment remains a separate, well-documented drag on cash flow for any business that invoices rather than collects payment instantly at checkout.

Metric	Figure	Year	Source
Global e-commerce sales	$6.42 trillion	2025	eMarketer
E-commerce as share of retail	20.5%	2025	eMarketer
Online order return rate	19.3%	2025	NRF
Digital wallet share of checkout (global)	56%	2025	Worldpay
B2B buyers preferring online purchase	73%	2025	Sana Commerce

Table 1: E-commerce invoicing at a glance, 2025. Figures are drawn from separate named studies, not one unified data set.

The Bottom Line

E-commerce crossed $6.42 trillion in 2025 and keeps growing, but the payment methods behind it have shifted decisively toward digital wallets, and nearly one in five orders now comes back as a return that needs its own paperwork. B2B buyers have made their preference just as clear: 73% want to purchase, and by extension get invoiced, online rather than through a phone call or a mailed document. A BillyPaid invoice supports a payable link and tracked payment status by default, so an e-commerce or B2B seller does not have to bolt on a separate system to match how customers already expect to pay.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is global e-commerce in 2026? Global retail e-commerce sales reached $6.42 trillion in 2025 and are forecast to grow to $6.88 trillion in 2026, according to eMarketer’s February 2025 forecast, representing about 20.5% of total global retail sales.

What percentage of e-commerce orders get returned? An estimated 19.3% of online sales were returned in 2025, up from 17.6% in 2024, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report. NRF also found that 9% of all retail returns are fraudulent.

How do most online shoppers pay for e-commerce orders? Digital wallets are now the dominant e-commerce payment method worldwide, accounting for 56% of global checkout transaction value, ahead of credit cards at 20% and debit cards at 10%, per Worldpay’s Global Payments Report. In the United States specifically, digital wallets account for 40% of e-commerce transaction value.

Do B2B buyers want to purchase and get invoiced online? Yes. 73% of B2B buyers say they prefer purchasing online over traditional sales channels, according to Sana Commerce’s B2B Buyer Report 2025, a shift that is pushing B2B sellers toward self-service invoicing and online payment portals.