With Brexit lingering over the technology community, and likes of

trying to take the crown as the most vibrant tech hub in Europe, the UK needs to prove its worth. New research shows UK businesses have a huge appetite for technology because they are one of the world's leading adopters of technology.

(formerly Avangate), a provider of eCommerce and payment platforms for businesses, released its H1 2017 benchmark report on Digital Commerce Trends in Software & Online Services Sales. 2Checkout rivals PayPal and Stripe. The company’s Digital Commerce Benchmark follows trends in the global consumption of software and digital services, as reflected by purchases via the Avangate platform, highlighting fast-growing regions and categories as well as uncovering the most popular payment methods worldwide.

UK becomes the largest software consumer in Europe

In its report, it highlights how good UK tech sector is doing in the first half of the year. Said so,

the UK is the second-biggest buyer of Software, SaaS and Online services in the World

, only behind the US. The UK, thus is the largest software consumer in Europe. It also shows the movements variances amongst the top countries. With US leading the way in global sales of software, SaaS and online services, accounting for half of sales worldwide, followed as it was said before but distantly by the UK. Germany now claims the third spot, pushing Canada from third to fifth place. Germany, France and Japan account for a bit more than one third of sales in non-English-speaking countries, with Italy, the Netherlands and Spain coming in close behind.

Visa and Mastercard continue to dominate the payments world

2Checkout also looked into how those deals are made. In this case, Visa and Mastercard continue to dominate as the main payment method. However, digital payment systems continue to gain popularity with PayPal accounting for the second most common payment method at 20% of global online sales.

Almost half of UK payments are now done through PayPal.

That means that the 68 percent of global online sales are made by Visa and MasterCard, and so they continue to dominate in terms of payment methods. PayPal follows at 20 percent and American Express at 7 percent. This distribution holds in the United States, with other countries showing stronger preferences for local payment methods such as Alipay in China (54 percent), iDEAL in the Netherlands (44 percent), local credit cards in Brazil (23 percent) and Turkey (17 percent), Carte Bancaire in France (at 12 percent) and JCB and Konbini in Japan (with 15 and 5 percent respectively).

Security matters when buying software products online

Security and privacy products lead software products sold online at 30%. The likes of Adobe is gaining stronger ground with multimedia and design software following at 23%. With 2017 marked by cyber security breaches – WannaCry, Goldeneye, Equifax – it is not surprising that security and privacy products are the leading category in software products sold online. Multimedia and design software (including audio-visual tools) follows at 23 percent, and online services come in strong at 20 percent. Other categories tracked in the report include utilities, marketing tools, web tools, office tools and development tools. Subscriptions are also on high demand as online products, gaining ground from earlier years. In 2012, only about half (49 percent) of software sales were for subscription-based products and services, while a substantial 75 percent of sales so far in 2017 have been subscriptions. “The global software market continues to shift toward subscriptions and diversify in terms of the types of products people demand,” said Erich Litch, 2Checkout’s Chief Revenue Officer. “As companies continue to expand into international markets, they need to be prepared to support a broad range of payment methods and business models, employ a variety of merchandising tools and sell through multiple channels and touchpoints.”