eCommerce Takes 17.1% of Retail Sales as Online Growth Accelerates

For every $100 Americans spent at retailers in the second quarter, $17.10 went through eCommerce, extending a gradual but persistent redirection of retail spending toward digital channels.

The 17.1% share reported for the second quarter of 2026 by the U.S. Census Bureau in its “Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales” report was up from 17.0% in the first quarter and 16.3% a year earlier. Seasonally adjusted eCommerce sales reached $340.2 billion, increasing 3.8% from the previous quarter and 12.2% from a year earlier. Total retail sales rose 2.9% quarter over quarter and 6.7% year over year.

As the data show, eCommerce is gaining share because online sales are expanding faster than retail overall. The second-quarter figures continue a longer pattern in which more retail dollars are being steered online even as stores remain the destination for the large majority of consumer spending.

The Census numbers also provide a useful complement to what PYMNTS Intelligence has been finding at the level of individual shoppers: Digital commerce is no longer confined to a consumer sitting at a computer and placing an online order. Consumers move between websites, apps, phones and stores to find products, compare prices, check availability and decide where and how to buy.

The 2026 Global Digital Shopping Index: U.S. Playbook, a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa Acceptance Solutions, found the typical American shopper now records 51 digital shopping days a month, compared with 46 in January 2024.

Remote purchasing rose from an average of 12 days per month in 2024 to 13 in 2026. Buy online, pick up in-store increased from eight days to nine, while digitally assisted shopping inside stores rose from six to seven.

Consumers have more opportunities to buy digitally, while online shopping makes it relatively easy to move among merchants looking for a better price, an available product or a more convenient way to get it.

Price remains an important part of that equation. The PYMNTS and Visa Acceptance Solutions research found that 60% of shoppers want price matching, while only 47% of merchants provide it, the largest gap between consumer demand and merchant availability measured in the study.

Convenience, however, is becoming just as important to understanding the digital shopper.

The Phone Changes What ‘Online’ Means

Mobile phones illustrate why the growth of eCommerce cannot be understood solely by separating store sales from online sales.

Phone use while shopping in a physical store rose from 30% of consumers in January 2024 to 42% in March 2026, according to the Global Digital Shopping Index. Product research on mobile phones reached 39% of shoppers in March, 14% higher than in January 2024.

More revealing is what shoppers are doing with those devices. Reading product reviews while in a store rose 30% from 2024, price comparison increased 18%, and checking which payment methods a merchant accepts rose 45%. Coupon hunting was flat to down.

In other words, consumers are using the phone not only to hunt for discounts but to remove uncertainty and save time before buying. The device allows a shopper standing in an aisle to compare another merchant’s price, check inventory, read what other buyers think and determine whether a preferred payment method will work.

As artificial intelligence makes even further inroads into commerce, as PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster noted in a recent column, AI agents become the “the anchor and the landlord all rolled into one” by helping determine what consumers see and which retailers get considered. That builds on a digital shopping pattern already visible in PYMNTS data: consumers are using online tools throughout the purchase process, giving retailers more opportunities to win, or lose, a sale before the shopper ever reaches a store or checkout page.

The Tuesday Census data measure the sales “mix.” The PYMNTS data show the behavior behind that mix.