Despite the sluggish global economy of the last two years, Javelin Strategy & Research revealed a robust U.S. online transaction market, in its February 2010 report. Online Retail Payments Forecast 2010-2014 reported that e-commerce in the U.S. climbed 10.8 percent in 2009 to a $205 billion total. Online transactions grew as a share of total transactions at the same time, reaching 5.5 percent last year.

While 70 percent of consumers buying online used major credit cards to do so, the survey determined that 51 percent of respondents used other alternatives instead or as well. Debit cards were used by 55 percent, about half used PayPal or Google Checkout, and 41 percent used the gift card of a specific merchant. PayPal’s Bill Me Later paid for online purchases of 17 percent of those surveyed.

Javelin also asked consumers why they used alternative payment options to their credit or debit cards. While one of every five said that they bought from sites that simply didn’t take credit cards, 19 percent said that they wanted greater fraud protection, 14 percent wanted to keep their identity private, 11 percent chose to delay payments, and 8 percent took advanage of loyalty or rewards programs. Only 3 percent of the participants had no credit or debit card.

A random sample of 3,294 U.S. consumers contributed to the results, along with U.S. Census e-commerce data, online travel purchase estimated from BEA, and publicly available payments activity data from EBay and similar sites, and major credit card companies.

The complete report offers e-commerce-enabled sites several clues into what consumers want and need from their sites. Not just for retailers, the report gives even news and information publishers a clue to the way online visitors want to interact when money is involved.

Here are more details on the Javelin Strategy & Research findings.