How do people in Romania pay online?
Online shopping keeps growing. GPeC, the Romanian e-commerce association, estimated the market at EUR 11.7 billion in 2024, up about 10%, of which EUR 7.7 billion was physical goods delivered by courier, and about 11% of Romanian retail now happens online. A report by the platform Gomag, published by Bursa, said physical goods alone passed EUR 8 billion in 2025.
Cards are the minority. Speaking at the GPeC Summit on 13 October 2026, eMAG’s chief executive Tudor Manea put card payments at about 35% of online payments across the market. A MerchantPro report cited by Agerpres found about one third of online transactions in 2024 were paid by card. Most of the rest is still paid on delivery; eMAG itself said more than half of its own orders are now paid in advance. Visa and Mastercard are the card brands shoppers carry.
Account ownership is lower than in most of the EU. The World Bank’s Global Findex puts the share of adults with an account at 71.3% in 2024, so close to three in ten adults have no account to pay from.
RoPay is the new option. It is Romania’s national scheme for instant account-to-account payments by phone, run under rules set by the Romanian Association of Banks and TRANSFOND, the operator of the interbank clearing house. It became operational on 14 October 2024 and supports QR codes, deep links, NFC and phone number aliases. BRD made the first live online payments with RoPay on 18 December 2025. eMAG added RoPay with ING on 15 July 2026, when about 6.77 million people could already use it to pay online, and the payment gateway EuPlatesc connected directly to TRANSFOND’s infrastructure on 24 August 2026. The register of 10 September 2026 lists 11 participants.
For online purchases, RoPay works from the banking app. On a phone, the shopper pays with their phone number or picks their bank, and the app opens to approve the payment. On a computer, the checkout shows a QR code the shopper scans with the banking app. Under the scheme rulebook, an online RoPay payment can be up to RON 100,000 and settles in TRANSFOND’s instant payment system within 10 seconds.
What rules shape online payments in Romania?
VAT is 21%. Law 141/2025 raised the standard rate from 19% to 21% from 1 August 2025 and set the reduced rate at 11%. A seller established in another EU country whose cross-border sales to consumers across the EU pass EUR 10,000 a year charges Romanian VAT on sales to Romanian customers, and can declare it through the One Stop Shop.
Parcels from outside the EU pay a logistics fee. From 1 January 2026, Romania charges RON 25 per parcel with a value below EUR 150 sent to Romania from outside the EU, which affects cross-border sellers that ship directly to shoppers.
Sales to consumers are reported electronically. Romania’s RO e-Factura system, used for invoices between businesses, has also required businesses to report invoices for sales to consumers since 1 January 2025.
Shoppers have 14 days to withdraw. As across the EU, a consumer who buys online can cancel within 14 days of receiving the goods without giving a reason, and the seller must refund within 14 days of being told, including the standard delivery cost. The seller may wait until the goods are back or the shopper shows proof of sending them.
How would Omno route payments in Romania?
A merchant would connect once and set routing rules per method, currency and customer group. In Romania:
- Card pay-ins can be routed by BIN, so cards from each issuing bank go to the provider your rule sets for each issuer, with cascading to the next provider in the rule if one is unavailable or rejects the request.
- RoPay pay-ins would go to a provider connected to the scheme, with the hosted checkout showing a QR code on desktop or opening the banking app on mobile, and the order pending until the bank confirms.
Webhooks would report the final status of every payment, the record a back office should trust before shipping an order, and the routing-decision log would show which provider handled each payment and why. Cash on delivery stays with the merchant’s courier and is outside payment routing.
What should merchants plan for?
Plan for shoppers who prefer to pay later. With cards at about a third of online payments, a store that only takes cards misses many buyers. Show card and RoPay clearly at checkout so shoppers who are ready to pay in advance can do so.
Plan for RoPay as a second online method. It is young, and eMAG’s chief executive said its conversion still needs work in checkout flows, but it lets shoppers pay from their bank account without typing card details.
Plan for the new VAT and the parcel fee. Prices need the 21% rate, and sellers shipping from outside the EU need to account for the RON 25 fee per low-value parcel.