UK consumers and households do not keep all online spending within the UK. ONS analysis of anonymised Visa data shows substantial international online spending, with software-related merchant categories providing one of the clearest technology examples.
In 2024, online spending at computer software stores within the published top merchant categories was split 48.7% to Europe and 42.9% to North America. Asia-Pacific accounted for 7.7%, with much smaller shares elsewhere.
Software spending is unusually international
Digital software can be bought from anywhere, so geographic merchant location matters differently from physical retail. A UK buyer may use a service with a familiar local-facing website while the merchant entity processing the transaction is overseas.
This makes software a useful example of how digital purchasing can cross borders without the consumer necessarily thinking of the transaction as an import.
Europe and North America dominate the software category
The 48.7% Europe and 42.9% North America shares mean those two regions together accounted for more than nine-tenths of the observed online spend in the computer software stores category.
That does not tell us which individual products were bought or whether the merchants were subscription services, one-off software purchases or other digital products.
Merchant category is not the same as product category
Visa merchant category codes group transactions by merchant type. They do not reveal the exact item purchased.
A consumer-tech article should therefore avoid turning the category into a ranking of software brands or products. The evidence supports geographic spending patterns, not product popularity.
International spending data also has disclosure limits
ONS notes that Visa applies statistical disclosure controls, meaning some countries can be suppressed. Regional totals are therefore more robust than trying to infer detailed country rankings from incomplete data.
The analysis is also based on Visa card data rather than every payment method used by UK consumers.
The useful lesson is about digital market reach
For technology buyers, the data shows how international the software market has become. UK online spending can flow heavily to Europe and North America even when the buyer is simply purchasing a digital service from home.
That matters for understanding merchant location, currency, support arrangements and consumer rights, but it should not be mistaken for a complete measure of the software market.
Sources: Office for National Statistics consumer-card spending analysis, Figure 7, 2024. Shares are Visa-based merchant-category data and do not identify individual software products.