WhatsApp Business is reducing utility message rates and increasing marketing message rates. A change that aims to encourage business communication and reduce spam. The new utility rates will take effect... The post WhatsApp Business is changing its rates appeared first on Cross-Border E-commerce Magazine ..read more

Decathlon is negotiating the acquisition of a majority stake in Tradeinn, the Spanish e-commerce giant Tradeinn, specializing in sports equipment, to strengthen its online sales strategy, according to Expansión and... The post Decathlon is negotiating the acquisition of a majority stake in Tradeinn appeared first on Cross-Border E-commerce Magazine ..read more

Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group (“Alibaba International”) has announced that around 500,000 merchants have adopted its generative artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit in more than 40 e-commerce domains. Since the launch of the toolkit last November under the name “Aidge,” the number of average daily calls to the application programming interface (API) has doubled every two months and now exceeds 50 million. Currently, more than 100 million product listings on Alibaba International's platforms have been refined and adapted to multiple languages with the help of AI, enabling mercha ..read more

Meta – parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp –  will not launch its upcoming multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) models in the European Union (EU) due to the “unpredictable nature” of its regulatory environment. “We will launch a multimodal Llama model in the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment,” the company has advanced to Axios media. This decision may have several consequences for both companies and users in the EU. One of them is that European companies will not have access to this multimodal AI technology ..read more

Adobe has released new shopping insights from Amazon Prime Day, revealing that US retailers' online sales totaled USD 14.2 billion—a growth of 11% year over year (YoY). Consumers spent $7.2 billion on July 16 (Tuesday), the first day of the Prime Day event, representing 11.7% growth year-over-year (YoY). On the second day (July 17, Wednesday), consumers spent $7 billion online, up 10.4% YoY. This brought the final 2-day total to $14.2 billion, up 11.0% YoY and setting a new record for Prime Day. The research highlights a shift in consumer behavior towards mobile shopping, with nearly half (49 ..read more

By Cinzia Barberis By Cinzia Barberis - Sales periods provoke mixed feelings in the industry. Do we love them? Do we hate them? Do we need them? We are aware that there is a huge pool of customers that love them. In fact, they will only buy in sales periods. Maybe that’s why we are already seeing retailers starting their sales even before the general “go % off” dates. What can go wrong? Less than 40% is no longer considered a sale (and I am being generous). The downside? that impulsive buying due to the “bargain effect” will raise and so will do our returns rate. It is true that sometimes we ..read more

Joom is an international group of e-commerce companies founded in June 2016 in Riga, Latvia. As of the beginning of 2024, Joom has amassed over 400 million users worldwide across iOS, Android, and Web.  The marketplace has 25 million monthly active users and 20 million active buyers, and in 2021, Joom joined the Product Safety Pledge initiative — an agreement to cooperate with the EU Member States to remove dangerous products from its websites. Joom has also become the first non-VLOP (i.e., not a very large online platform, a term referring to platforms with more than 45 million average ..read more

According to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Netherlands' e-commerce penetration rate is the highest globally, at 84%. Following the ranking are the UK, Sweden, and Denmark, with over four out of five users also buying online. China ranks fifth and is the first non-European country in the e-commerce penetration list, as indicated in UNCTAD’s Digital Economy Report (page 145). These percentages reflect the proportion of internet users who shop online. This proportion is relatively high in China, but many Chinese consumers are not yet digital ..read more

By GENUINE, Shanghai, China 2024.07.05 Curious about what sets the e-commerce markets of China and the West apart? It's not just about the size of their populations. Cultural preferences, payment practices, and what consumers value when shopping online play a huge role too. These factors have uniquely shaped the e-commerce landscape in each country. Dive into today’s episode to get a closer look at these differences and learn how they're guiding businesses to tailor their strategies. Let's explore together! Platforms and Ecosystems:  In China, the online shopping world is mostly contro ..read more

The European Commission (EC) informed this Thursday that it considers as good the concessions offered by Apple to open to its rivals the NFC wireless technology to which it limits the possibilities of the contactless payment 'Tap to Pay' of its iPhone phones -which in practice restricted competition in favor of its Apple Pay service-, binding commitments that Apple must comply with for ten years to avoid a millionaire fine from Brussels for abuse of dominant position. Ultimately, this means that iPhone users will be able to use other payment apps in addition to Apple Pay, thus enabling third ..read more