Employees work at the AliExpress office at Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Nov 18, 2019. [Photo/Agencies]

WARSAW - AliExpress, an online retail service based in China, aims to increase its market share in Poland over the coming years, the head for Central and Eastern Europe of the global e-commerce giant told local media on Monday.

In an interview with Polish Press Agency, Gary Topp, the company's president for Central and Eastern Europe, said that the Polish market is a long-term commitment for AliExpress due to its growth potential, with plans to expand customer services in 2021. These include expanding the number of products with three-day delivery and spread payments.

"AliExpress has been active in Central and Eastern Europe since 2017, and Poland is a key market in the region," Topp said. "We have since witnessed enormous growth, especially when it comes to the Polish e-commerce market, which is one of the fastest growing and most innovative in Europe."

AliExpress is currently the second largest purely online e-commerce platform in Poland, with an estimated 5.87 million active users in 2020, up from 4.8 million a year ago. The total e-commerce market in Poland is slated to grow by 27 percent this year, or 11.7 percent of total retail sales in the country, according to a survey by market research company Gemius last summer.

According to Topp, the well-developed infrastructure for electronic payment and logistics have played a large part in the growth.

"The pandemic has also helped accelerate the adoption of e-commerce by both buyers and sellers," Topp said, "which has motivated us to increase investments into our platform as we want to make sure that consumers can get the products they need at any moment during this challenging period."