Why local payment methods still win
Baltic shoppers reach for a bank link more often than a card. Here is what that means for conversion.
If you look at e-commerce data from Western Europe, the card looks like the default payment method. In the Baltics it is not.
More than half of online purchases in Latvia are paid with a bank link — the shopper is redirected to their internet bank, confirms the payment and returns to the shop. Cards come second, and the gap has not narrowed in recent years.
Why that is
The reason is not technical, it is habit. Baltic banks offered online payments earlier and more widely than in many other markets, and shoppers got used to confirming a payment where their money already sits.
There is a practical side too. A bank link payment is confirmed immediately and the merchant sees the result without waiting. There is no authorisation that might fail later.
What it means for a shop
If your checkout only has a card field, you are losing shoppers who are looking for their bank’s logo. That is not a theoretical loss — it shows up as abandoned baskets at exactly the payment step.
Three things worth checking in your own shop:
- Are your banks in the list? Swedbank, SEB and Citadele cover most Latvian shoppers.
- Are their logos visible without an extra click? A method hidden behind “other options” effectively does not exist.
- Is the list still readable on mobile? More than half of payments happen on a phone.
Where cards still win
Bank links are not a universal answer. For recurring payments and subscriptions the card remains the only practical option, because a bank link requires the shopper to be present for every transaction.
Cards also matter for cross-border shoppers. If you sell outside the Baltics, a list of bank links does nothing for your Estonian customer if it only contains Latvian banks.
The practical answer is usually simple: offer both and let the shopper choose.