Romanians become more cautious with online shopping. How many billions of lei we give online at the gambling and the more the budgets dropped
Young, in a gaming room. Illustrative photo: David Crausby / Alamy / Profimedia
The high inflation in Romania caused over a quarter of those who buy online to significantly reduce their online expenses, while almost 40% have reduced consumption, but to a moderate level.
Only a quarter of Romanians say that they did not change their online consumption habits, according to the study by Easysales, during which information was collected, between July 16 and 30, 2025, from 1,036 respondents, respecting the socio-demographic structure of the population of the Internet users in Romania.
“Fashion and jewelry (31%) and electronics (22%) suffer the first cuts, while the essentials escape. 83% are more sensitive to the delivery costs, and 81% we hunt discounts. We constantly analyze the evolution of the ecommerce market and, this autumn, we will present a new radiography of the Romanian market, during our ECOMSALE EVEN.” Cazacu, CEO and co -founder Easysales.
Asked how much the monthly shopping budget reduced, one third of the respondents say that the level is between 101 and 250 lei.
A quarter spends online, monthly, less with between 251 and 500 lei. A remarkable percentage is 18.3%, of those who reduced the expenses online by over 500 lei a month.
In January – June 2025, he claims the National Institute of Statistics, at the request of Hotnews, the Romanians played about 5.5 billion lei for gambling: sports bets, lotteries, online casinos. The amount exceeds the total of the tourists' accommodation expenses in hotels throughout the country, these being 5 billion lei.
We spend online with the card, at online gambling, 3.1% of the figure playing worldwide, given that Romania represents 0.33% of the global economy. In other words, we are 10 times more active at gambling than in creating economic value.
The first alarm signal was pulled in June 2024 by Florian Neagu, the director of the Financial Stability Directorate of the NBR, who said that most online transactions made by Romanian citizens with cards are made to participate in gambling.
According to estimates of the main players in the field, the e-commerce sector in Romania was evaluated at about 7 billion euros for the end of 2023. The value of 7 billion euros refers to all the transactions in Romania, both to the local traders and to the online stores outside the country's borders and represent strictly the e-tail segment, which is the physical products.
In this amount were not included the services, the payment of invoices to utilities, digital content or air tickets, holidays and travel, hotel reservations, shows or different events, etc. If we added them, the total value would exceed 10 billion euros.
