According to new data from marketing analysis firm SEMRush, Bitcoin (BTC) is the third-most preferred online payment method in Italy.

Bitcoin comes in third place

On Oct. 31, the Italian news outlet La Stampa reported that the Boston-based marketing analysis company, it was stated that in the list of the most used methods of online payment systems in Italy, Bitcoin comes in a strong, third place, just behind PayPal and the Italian reloadable prepaid card service PostePay.

The data further revealed that Italians use Bitcoin for shopping online more widely than traditional credit cards, such as Visa, Mastercard or American Express.

According to La Stampa, Bitcoin is used more than 215,800 times per month for online purchases in Italy, while American Express is used just 189,000 per month. Visa, Mastercard, and other credit cards lag with only 33,950 online transactions per month.

Paypal and PostePay take the lead

The California-based online payment service Paypal remains the uncontested choice for online payments in Italy with around 1.3 million payment transactions per month. The Italian payment processor PostePay follows closely, with almost 1.2 million monthly transactions.

Worth noting is that the data did not take into account the number of Paypal and PostePay accounts that were linked to credit cards.

Italians are buying more and more online

La Stampa wrote that in 2018 the total business-to-customer spending on e-commerce was over 40 billion euros, with 62% of Italians making at least one online purchase in that year.