The card organisation says over the last three months of 2002 European Web sites sold over €2.5 billion to Visa cardholders online, with over 31 million transactions processed in total.

Recent strong quarterly growth has helped sustain the increase with online transactions in the last quarter up by 40% compared to the previous three months. Sales volumes also increased, with the amount spent online up by a third (33%) in the latter half of last year.

The travel and entertainment sector has seen the biggest growth with European online sales in the last months of 2002 five times (531%) that of the same period in 2001. Online bookings for tourist attractions, hotels and airline tickets were also among the biggest climbers and bookings for car rentals in Q4 2002 were over nine times (947%) that of the same period in 2001.

Despite pessimistic forecasts, the retail sector also performed well, with e-commerce sales in the last quarter of 2002 up over 100% compared to the previous year-end. Christmas shopping helped buck the 'high street' trend with quarter-on-quarter online sales of electrical goods more than doubling (114%) in the run-up to December and online supermarket spending up by over half (58%) in the same period.

Hugo Bottelier, vice president of Visa EU, comments: "Our statistics prove that shopping online is continuing to grow in popularity, particularly in the peak season run up to Christmas."

He adds that as well as sustained growth in sales, the e-commerce arena is becoming increasingly diverse with more sectors beginning to take advantage of the convenience and accessibility of the Internet.