01 · The map
The shape of the market
European B2C ecommerce turnover was around €842 billion in 2024, growing about 7% nominally. But the useful fact is not the total, it is the distribution.
Western Europe is large, mature and expensive. France, Germany and Spain are the biggest markets. Buyers there already have a default shop for most categories, ad auctions are crowded, and next-day delivery is table stakes rather than an advantage.
Central and Eastern Europe is smaller per head and growing roughly three times faster, about 18% against 6% in 2024. Fewer sellers, cheaper traffic, and buying habits that suit a simple direct-response offer.
Southern Europe sits between the two. Italy and Spain have real volume, higher average order values, and a meaningful cash on delivery share outside the big cities.
The numbers behind all of this, with sources, are on the data page.
Nobody sells to Europe. They sell to Romania, learn what works, and copy it into Bulgaria.
02 · Payment
How Europeans actually pay
This is where sellers coming from other regions get the biggest surprise, because it varies more inside Europe than between Europe and anywhere else.
Cards and wallets dominate in the West and are growing everywhere.
Local methods matter disproportionately. BLIK in Poland, Multibanco in Portugal, iDEAL in the Netherlands. Offering the local method visibly lifts conversion, and omitting it quietly costs you sales you never see.
Cash on delivery still runs large parts of the East and South. On penetration measures Greece leads at around 85.6%, Bulgaria and Slovakia sit near 80%, Poland at about 60.7%. Romania is commonly estimated at 60% to 65% of orders actually paid in cash at the door.
The consequence for a small seller is enormous. In a COD market you do not need a payment processor, which means no merchant account approval, no chargebacks, and a three-field form instead of a checkout. That removes most of the barriers that stop people starting.
03 · Delivery
What delivery expectations mean in practice
European buyers have been trained by domestic retailers to expect one to three days. That standard now applies to you whether or not your supply chain can meet it.
If you ship individually from outside Europe, you are quoting two to four weeks against a market norm of two. In prepaid that produces refunds and bad reviews. In cash on delivery it produces refusals, which is worse, because you have paid for the parcel twice and collected nothing.
Holding stock inside the EU collapses that to 24 hours domestically and 48 hours across most of Eastern Europe. It is the single change that makes everything else work, which is why so much of this site is about warehousing rather than marketing.
Practical detail worth knowing: parcel lockers are huge in Poland and Central Europe and excellent for prepaid orders, but they add a collection step that hurts COD acceptance. Door delivery is usually the right default when the buyer is paying on arrival. More on that in the courier comparison.
04 · Compliance
The rules that apply to you
Not legal advice, and every one of these deserves a professional if you are trading seriously. But you should at least know the names.
- Customs. The EU began phasing out the €150 duty relief threshold on 1 July 2026. A flat €3 duty now applies per item type, plus national per-parcel handling fees, and the flat rate is temporary until about July 2028. Per-parcel importers pay it on every order; bulk importers pay it once per product per shipment. See the de minimis breakdown.
- GPSR. The General Product Safety Regulation covers almost all non-food consumer products. Selling from outside the EU means you are expected to have an EU Authorised Representative responsible for compliance documentation.
- VAT. Distance selling thresholds and the One Stop Shop scheme determine where you register and file. This one genuinely needs an accountant.
- EPR and packaging. Extended Producer Responsibility obligations apply to packaging in several member states.
- Consumer rights. EU consumer law gives buyers withdrawal rights on distance sales. Build returns into your model rather than treating them as an anomaly.
The pattern in all of it
Every rule above is lighter, cheaper or simpler when your goods are already inside the EU with an EU entity handling them. That is not a coincidence. The regulatory direction of travel over the past two years has consistently favoured local presence over cross-border parcel flow.
05 · The setup
What a working setup actually looks like
Stripped to essentials, a seller doing this profitably in Eastern Europe has five things:
A product that suits a doorstep
Under about 1.2 kg so it stays in the cheap shipping band, visual enough to sell in a short video, and priced so a 3x to 4x markup still feels fair when somebody is handing over cash.
Stock inside the EU
Bought in bulk, held near the buyer. This is what turns delivery speed from a liability into an advantage and stops customs scaling with your order count.
A landing page in the local language
One product, one promise, one form. Name, phone, city. Not a store, and not a machine translation.
Confirmation before shipping
Somebody calls the buyer in their own language and confirms the address and the price before a parcel is packed. This is the largest single lever on your delivery rate.
Cash collection and payouts you can plan around
The courier collects at the door, and the money reaches your bank on a schedule you know. On our network that is weekly, every Friday.
Ad platforms, creative and product research are variation on top of those five.
06 · Errors
What sellers from outside Europe get wrong
Treating Europe as one market
One campaign in English across a dozen countries reaches nobody properly. Language, courier, payment habit and price sensitivity all change at every border.
Starting in the biggest market
France is Europe's largest ecommerce market and one of the hardest places for a new seller to gain traction. Size is not opportunity.
Removing cash on delivery to avoid handling cash
In Greece, Bulgaria or Romania that decision quietly removes most of your addressable market in exchange for administrative convenience.
Ignoring compliance until a platform forces it
GPSR, VAT and EPR are cheaper to sort out deliberately than in a panic after a marketplace suspension.
Assuming slow delivery is survivable
It is not, and it is least survivable in exactly the markets where COD makes entry easiest.
FAQ
Questions people ask
Pick one country rather than the continent, ideally one where cash on delivery is normal so you do not need a payment processor to begin. Get stock into a warehouse in that region so you can deliver in a day or two, build a landing page in the local language, and confirm every order by phone before shipping.
Not to start testing in cash on delivery markets, because there is no card processor in the flow and therefore no merchant account to be approved for. You will need to deal with VAT registration, GPSR and an EU Authorised Representative as you trade seriously, and those are questions for an accountant and a compliance specialist.
Usually Romania. It has the highest cash on delivery share in the EU at an estimated 60% to 65% of orders, ad costs are still reasonable, and 24 hour domestic delivery is achievable from a local warehouse. Bulgaria and Greece are the natural second and third markets.
One to three days is the domestic norm across most of Europe, and buyers apply that standard to you regardless of where you ship from. Shipping individually from outside Europe typically takes two to four weeks, which produces refunds in prepaid and outright refusals in cash on delivery.
It depends heavily on the country. Cards and wallets dominate in the West, local methods like BLIK in Poland and Multibanco in Portugal lift conversion noticeably, and cash on delivery still carries large parts of the East and South. Removing the cash option in Greece, Bulgaria or Romania costs a substantial share of conversions.