The 829 Most Important E-Commerce News Stories From 2022

2022 was a rollercoaster year for e-commerce. Record breaking numbers, but also record breaking layoffs. TikTok and other Chinese marketplaces ramped up their efforts in the US. BNPL experienced unprecedented growth and attracted the attention of regulators. Lots of ebb and flow in 2022 in our industry.

I launched the Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter in January 2021 to highlight the most important happenings in our industry and have since published 101 weekly editions. This week's Special Edition recaps the most important news stories of the year. You can click the source link in each story to learn more, or check out our web archives for full previous editions of the newsletter.

You'll notice one big thing missing from the highlights below, and that's LAYOFFS. Other publications like Crunchbase and Visual Capitalist already did a great job recapping all the tech layoffs from 2022, so I left them off this list.

If you find this 2022 E-commerce Recap helpful, please share it with your friends and colleagues in the industry so that they too can be the smartest e-commerce exec in the room.

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January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

January 2022

Major credit bureaus like Equifax and Experian announced formal standards for reporting BNPL loans in the U.S.

US holiday sales (defined as Nov 1 – Dec 24) jumped 8.5% from last year as consumers spent more money on clothes, jewelry, and electronics according to MasterCard Spending Pulse.

A LendingTree survey found 36% of American consumers incurred holiday debt this year (up from 31% in 2020), averaging $1,249.

Amazon, Penguin Rando House, and a group of Authors Guild members were awarded $7.8M in statutory damages in a default judgment against a group of e-book piracy websites from the Ukraine.

eBay announced changes to their affiliate program to combat expired links which resulted from affiliates linking to individual listings.

Google launched Shops section in mobile results which showed up to ten retailers based on their organic search rankings.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is peering into the policies of BNPL platforms, concerned that they may encourage overspending while dodging existing regulations around credit and lending.

JD.com opened its first stores in in the Netherlands with robots that pick and sort orders and then delivers them to shoppers on a conveyor belt.

Spotify made its podcast advertising more interactive with CTA cards that feature customizable text, visuals, and call-to-actions such as “Shop Now”.

Police investigated 600 Amazon packages found tossed off the side of the road in Oklahoma City that never reached their Christmas destinations.

Around the same time, three more Amazon sellers pleaded guilty to price fixing, and a class action lawsuit was filed against Amazon for allegedly using its Alexa devices to improperly capture and store consumers' biometric data.

Shopify filed a patent application for a system of sensors that can measure traffic, density, and behavior of shoppers in retail stores.

Lululemon named a former Amazon exec as the new CEO of its at-home gym Mirror.

Walmart filed several new trademarks that indicated its intent to make and sell virtual goods, offer users a virtual currency, and buy NFTs.

Shopify app marketplace started recommending competitors' apps at the bottom of app detail pages, and many Shopify app developers weren't happy about the change.

Visa introduced cloud-based payment acceptance that let businesses move payment processing software from being embedded in each hardware device to being universally accessible in the cloud.

Amazon entered into a multi-year agreement with Stellantis to power their cockpit software, offering Alexa-enabled voice assistance, navigation, vehicle maintenance, payment services, and integration with smart home and security services.

JCPenney named two new executives — Sharmeelee Bala, the new Chief Information Officer, an Katie Mullen, the new Chief Digital and Transformation Officer — to help lead their e-commerce transformation.

Amazon workers at an Alabama warehouse got another chance to unionize, after a federal labor board set a February date for the rerun election.

Shopify partnered with JD.com to help U.S. merchants sell their goods in China by handling the price conversion and shipping logistics from U.S. to China.

Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon announced more acquisitions in 2021 than any other year in the past decade, suggesting that companies were trying to do deals before an antitrust crackdown ensued.

Amazon announced that it would open its first Amazon Style clothing store this year in Glendale, California at The Americana shopping mall.

Google hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division, and Walmart has hired Tom Ward, their current senior VP of last mile deliveries, to replace Casey Carl, their top e-commerce executive.

An insider reported that Shopify was expected to halve its previous capacity for fulfilling e-commerce orders for merchants after terminating contracts with several warehouse and fulfillment partners.

Coinbase announced that it will let you pay with Mastercard in its upcoming NFT Marketplace.

Ethiopian Airlines Group ramped up its investment in cargo services and infrastructure to become a logistics hub for Africa's growing e-commerce market.

Amazon and Meta spent a record amount of money lobbying the federal government in 2021, while Apple actually decreased its lobbying budget during the year.

Walmart announced plans to open a new e-commerce fulfillment center in Mississippi in spring 2022.

An eBay seller pleaded guilty to selling $3.2M in stolen goods, acquired at their pawn store in Rochester, NY.

Officials from India's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) met last week with representatives from Amazon and Flipkart to discuss proposed e-commerce policy.

Researchers from the NYU School of Global Public Health questioned whether e-commerce retailers should be responsible for providing nutritional labeling given the rise in online grocery sales.

The US Patent and Trademark Office upheld two oppositions filed by Spotify for trademark infringement against POTIFY, ruling that the two names are so similar that it can cause consumer confusion.

Walmart announced a new partnership with Angi that made Angi's 250k service professionals available to Walmart customers online in in stores.

PayPal launched an extension to its BNPL service that allowed German users to pay in full for online transactions up to €1000 without interest up to 30 days.

BigCommerce announced that it would be launching into Germany, Mexico, and Spain — marking their official entry into Latin America.

Shopify rejected claims from five major publishers who alleged that they were allowing the sale of pirated textbooks and test materials on their platform.

Squarespace enabled its users to upload video directly to their Squarespace site and sell access on a one-off or recurring subscription basis. 

Afterpay announced partnerships with Nordstrom, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein — with Nordstom already offering the company's BNPL services online and in-store.

Coinbase added Shopify founder, Tobi Lütke, to their board of directors, as part of their push to expand its e-commerce capabilities and create an NFT marketplace.

The CFPB issued a notice and request for comment in the Federal Register regarding their inquiry into BNPL providers to help the Bureau better understand how consumers interact with BNPL providers.

eBay started authenticating trading cards worth $750 or more from collectible card games, sports, and non-sports cards.

Daily domestic-package volume hit 100M packages per day in 2022 — four years earlier than originally forecast by FedEx.

February 2022

Shopify was granted a patent for technology that makes it easier to take body measurements and determine a customer's correct sizes for clothing.

Wish introduced an invite only process for selecting merchants in an attempt to improve its product quality.

eMarketer created a Top 10 List of countries with the highest e-commerce share of total retail sales, ranking China in first place by a landslide with 46.3% of retail sales (or $3 trillion) taking place online.

Pinterest introduced a new augmented reality tool for home furniture that allowed shoppers to see how the items would look in their homes before they buy.

Block officially completed their $29B acquisition of Afterpay that it initially entered in August 2021, and started launching its first integration of the BNPL service to Square merchants. 

Bold Commerce started offering a headless checkout experience to replace WooCommerce's native checkout, enabling bands to fully customize their checkout process.

Shopify hired Walter Kuhn, an Apple lobbyist, to work on intellectual property issues, including stopping the sale of counterfeit goods on their platform. 

Seven members of the US House of Representatives probed Amazon for its continued sale of a food preservative reportedly used to aid suicides, after 10 people died by suicide using the compound.

Amazon unveiled a ‘Buy Black' virtual storefront for Black History Month that included filters to let customers buy from Black-owned businesses.

Wix introduced subdirectories to help multilingual sites improve their SEO ranking for each of their languages. 

Amazon and Nike reportedly considered purchasing Peloton, but as we know in hindsight, they did not.

Signifyd announced their 2022 Most Influential in Ecommerce award winners, and I wasn't on it.

Britain told four BNPL firms — Clearpay, Klarna, Laybuy, and Openpay — to change their contracts after identifying potential harms to consumers.

Apple announced plans to introduce a Tap to Pay feature for iPhone that turns the device into a contactless payment terminal.

Facebook Messenger made good on its promise to launch a Split Payments feature, two months after testing the feature.

Amazon announced its plans to expand its medical consultation service around the U.S., as part of their plan to become a major player in the health care industry.

Walmart's US division advised its suppliers that it was extending its RFID tagging requirements to products in new merchandise categories.

TikTok users started leaving notes in the Amazon app asking their delivery drivers to dance for their door cameras, and Amazon shared the videos on their corporate Twitter account.

Hundreds of e-commerce stores running the Magento 1 platform fell victim to a credit card skimming phishing attack via scripts that loaded from naturalfreshmall.com domain.

Google temporarily stopped crawling Shopify websites, which Google's John Mueller confirmed was an issue on Google's end, but the problem was quickly resolved.

eBay sent 1099-k tax forms to people who have never sold on the platform before and had to work with the IRS to resolve the issue.

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein unveiled plans to significantly bolster the Shopify Fulfillment Network by spending $1B over two years to greatly increase the number of company-owned warehouses.

Microsoft rolled out a new update for Windows 11 that brought support for Android applications via a partnership with Amazon.

Wix evacuated most of its 1,000 Ukranian employees and their families to Turkey during mounting military tensions.

Wish.com launched a new feature called “Wish Clips”, which are short videos designed to enhance the customer experience and simplify the path to purchase.

Amazon's Sponsored Brands advertising channel continued to expand its share of total ad spend on the platform, rising to more than 26% of total ad spend in Q4 2021.

Delta Air Lines and American Express partnered to offer a buy now pay later tool called Plan It as a payment option at checkout.

Amazon reached an agreement with Visa to accept its credit cards across its network, ending a months long standoff between the two companies.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office added Tencent Holdings Ltd and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd to the U.S. government's “notorious markets” list — which identifies companies that engage in or facilitate trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy.

Boeing achieved an annual record for e-commerce parts sales in 2021 with more than $2B in online orders to commercial and government customers. 

Wix collaborated with Yellow Pages Limited to help them strengthen their website offerings for SMBs.

BigCommerce was recognized as one of the Top 101 “Most Loved” software for 2022.

Russia's largest lender Sberbank established an e-commerce holding company to diversify away from purely financial services.

Kanye West sold 10k Stem Players in 3 days, after rejecting a $100M deal from Apple for his upcoming album Donda 2, which was released exclusively on the Stem Player.

Walmart reported that sick leave costs due to omicron increased to more than $400M in Q4 2021, well above the $100M it had anticipated, bringing its total spending on COVID-19 leave to over $1B last year.

Lids launched LidsHatDrop.com, an e-commerce site featuring limited headwear collections dropped twice weekly.

FedEx and BigCommerce agreed to a new alliance to offer merchants enhanced shipping capabilities.

Grubhub expanded its branded convenience offering nationwide in collaboration with 7-Eleven.

Seeking Alpha put together a list of publicly traded companies with the most exposure to Ukraine, of which many were Israeli for obvious reasons.

BigCommerce announced a direct integration with Digital River to offer merchants a global commerce solution to manage payments, tax, fraud and compliance, and simplify cross-border selling.

Macy's executives shut down the idea to follow similar paths as Saks Fifth Avenue and spin off their online stores into separate businesses from their offline department stores.

Amazon sued two websites, AppSally and Rebatest, for creating an army of 900k “bad actors” tasked with writing fake product reviews.

Whole Foods opened its first-ever store in Washington D.C. that uses Amazon's Just Walk Out technology, which allows customers to bag their own groceries while in-store sensors track their selections.

Ian Crosby, co-founder and former CEO of the accounting software startup Bench, joined Shopify as product director of their business banking offering, Shopify Balance.

Rakuten launched an NFT marketplace that allowed for the purchase, sale, and trade of virtual assets based on Japanese manga and TV shows. 

March 2022

Ryan Breslow blasted Shopify in a 50+ tweet Twitter thread about why Bolt and other app developers were used by Shopify as free R&D and then thrown to the curb when Shopify took partner-provided features in-house.

Shopify banned merchants from selling cannabinoid products that contain more than 0.3% of any form of THC on their platform.

Shopify revealed the information filed in documents in a Virginia court, where the company continued to deny all the publishers' claims that it caused them harms, losses, or damages.

Amazon launched a New Seller Incentives program for professional sellers who list their first product on or after January 1, 2022.

Walmart brought the virtual clothing try-on tech it bought from Zeekit to Walmart.com and its mobile app with a feature called “Choose My Model” which matched a customer's appearance and body type.

Amazon reduced the credit it offered charities to use their Amazon Web Services from $2000 to $1000, catching many charities off guard who were unaware of the change until it came time to renew.

Hepsiburada launched the “Women's Cooperatives: Stronger with E-commerce in the Pandemic Project” to improve the digital and business skills of female entrepreneurs.

Square Inc. hired longtime in-house attorney for Amazon, Cameron Cohen, who had worked in the Amazon legal department for the previous 12 years.

Block was investigated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regarding its Cash App service, which requested information on their handling of customer complaints and disputes.

BigCommerce announced the winners of its 2021 Annual Partner Awards where it recognizes top-performing partners.

PayPal was sued in a class action law suit that alleged their BNPL fees targeted poor people.

Jamie Iannone, CEO of eBay, said in an interview with TheStreet.com that they were exploring the possibility of accepting cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.

Amazon launched Amazon Aware, a collection of 100+ clothing, beauty, bed & bath, and household products designed by an in-house team that use recycled or sustainable materials.

Pinterest announced that it would be allowing users in the U.S. to complete transactions within the app — a feature they said has been long requested by users.

E-commerce giants lobbied Congress about the SHOP SAFE Act, which was intended to prevent the sale of counterfeits online, but they felt would harm U.S. companies and consumers.

Stripe co-founder John Collison announced on Twitter that Stripe now supported crypto businesses including exchanges on-ramps, wallets, and NFT marketplaces.

George Hunt, an Amazon driver in Chicago, was shot at and struck twice in a car jacking in South Side Chicago while delivering an Amazon package.

Amazon announced a $10B buyback and 20:1 stock split, which went into effect in June 2022.

Instacart introduced in-store navigation and live phone support which allowed users to speak with a rep to receive help while carrying out a customer's order.

Mercado Libre had its systems hacked in an incident that exposed information related to 300k users of the platform.

Twitter announced that it would be introducing Twitter Shops, a shopping feature to allow merchants to publish a collection of up to 50 products which they could sell via their Twitter profiles.

Shopify launched Linkpop – a link-in-bio tool that integrates their checkout and allows visitors to make purchases with only three clicks.

Google was sued by a Florida restaurant group for allegedly prompting visitors with large buttons to order with food delivery companies like GrubHub, rather than direct them to the restaurants' own sites.

Chili's Grill & Bar launched an e-commerce shop featuring branded merchandise including t-shirts, fanny packs, pool floats, and more in celebration of its 47th birthday.

DoorDash announced a strategic partnership with Afterpay to offer BNPL finance options on all orders.

Sezzle cut its North American workforce by 20% in order to establish a path towards profitability and free cashflow.

Dollar General introduced banking options and customer payment alternatives including BNPL at more than 1,700 stores.

The Merchants Payments Coalition called on US politicians to block Visa and Mastercard interchange fee hikes that are set to take effect in April, citing anti-competitive dominance over the US markets.

Google Shopping unveiled a filter to show visitors products sold in “smaller stores”.

Shippo launched Shippo for Platforms in partnership with Shopify, which enabled the platform to power international shipping for their merchants without taking them outside of their existing experience.

Strong customer authentication (SCA) rules for e-commerce came into force in the UK to help protect consumers from fraud when shopping online.

Seven years after its launch, Google Domains officially came out of beta, ready to compete with GoDaddy, Namecheap, and other registrar giants.

Internal documents showed that Amazon had been aware since 2017 of customer complaints that its UI design misleads people into signing up for the subscription. 

A big anti-trust lawsuit against Amazon, which alleged that the company has too much control over how much outside vendors can charge for their products was thrown out by a DC Court.

Instacart unveiled Shoppable Recipes, which offered new product integrations with TikTok and Hearst.

Google launched their Last Mile Fleet Solution, which helps businesses optimize their last mile delivery journey. 

Adobe announced a significant expansion of its partner ecosystem and new capabilities to their Adobe Experience Cloud. 

Recharge.com launched its services in Australia, where there are 55M non-cash payment transactions worth $650B happening every day that they wanted a piece of. 

Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a month-old legislation to provide legal framework to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in the country.

BigCommerce partnered up with Cymbio, an e-commerce marketplace and dropship automation platform, to offer the new sales channel to their merchants.

The California consumer who sued Shopify for its alleged surreptitious collection of shoppers’ financial data resisted dismissal.

Squarespace and the New York Knicks announced the winners of the fifth annual “Make It Awards”.

BigCommerce released their Multi-Storefront feature, which allowed merchants to create and manage multiple storefronts within a single dashboard.

Wix announced an integration with Amazon that allowed merchants to leverage Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) to fulfill orders on other channels.

PayPal made its recently acquired Happy Returns feature available to all PayPal Checkout merchants at no extra cost.

USPS announced its new USPS Connect Local service, which offered next-day and same-day delivery to businesses, in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

FedEx revealed its new feature called Crosstrack for its mobile app that allows users to track their deliveries from other delivery companies including UPS, USPS, and Amazon.

Instacart launched an Amazon-style e-commerce platform called Instacart Platform, which offered a range of technologies that retailers can use a la carte or as a suite.

Instagram announced that it was expanding its product tagging capabilities to everyone in the U.S. over the next few months. 

Sea Ltd withdrew from India's retail market just months after starting operations there, as the firm faced a weak growth outlook.

Customer service questions on WhatsApp more than tripled in 2021 compared to 2020, with more than 80% of customers expected to continue contacting customer care on the channel. 

Trust Payments, a fintech specializing in frictionless payments, launched Stor, an e-commerce platform for SMBs.

Stripe started looking for banking partners in Australia so it can extend its payments and software offering into core financial services including loans and bank accounts.

Walmart sued BJ's Wholesale Club for allegedly stealing their proprietary technology, specifically the self-checkout option for the Sam's Club mobile app.

Douyin, the Chinese Tiktok, launched a new second-hand channel on its marketplace, dedicated to product resales and live streaming sessions to promote second-hand items.

Amazon was prepared to pay $100k to rename Seattle Pride's annual parade the “Seattle Pride Parade Presented by Amazon”, but Seattle Pride instead parted ways with them.

South Korea's antitrust regulator investigated Coupang for allegedly mobilizing employees to post false reviews on private brand products for more exposure and to attract customers.

Apple started working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, where users subscribe to hardware rather than just digital services.

H&M opened up its e-commerce sites in Germany and Sweden to third-party brands on a trial basis to see if a marketplace model will resonate with consumers.

April 2022

Visa launched an NFT creator program called Visa Creator Program to bring together artists, musicians, fashion designers and filmmakers and help them build their businesses with NFTs.

Wix Restaurants integrated with DoorDash's white-label fulfillment platform, DoorDash Drive, to provide restaurant owners access to their large delivery fleet.

NYSE management launched an investigation into why on March 18, one minute before the closing bell had rung at the NYSE, the price of Shopify's stock shot up $100 per share to $780 before immediately crashing down again in post-market trading.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) alleged that Amazon was trying to illegally enter India's physical retail market via its deal with the Future Group.

Amazon UK stopped packing products in single-use plastic delivery bags and instead switched to recyclable paper delivery bags and cardboard envelopes for orders shipped from its own fulfillment centers.

 PayPal stats found that 44% of falsely declined shoppers stopped or reduced shopping with a retailer.

Thousands of Etsy sellers committed to going on vacation mode, suspending sales for a little over a week, in protest of recent fee increases on the platform.

Amazon renewed a deal with JPMorgan Chase to issue their rewards credit card after flirting with American Express and Synchrony for several months.

The EU voted to mandate that everything from cellphones to e-bikes must have easily replaceable batteries by January 1, 2024.

Shopify announced plans to invest in nine climate tech startups, who will receive funding through its Sustainability Fund.

BigCommerce partnered with SellersFunding to develop custom extended payment terms that allowed sellers to pursue a platform transition to a D2C model with BigCommerce.

Macy's invested over $584M to open a 1.4M sq.ft. fulfillment center in China Grove, NC (near Charlotte) that will employ over 2,800 workers.

USPS raised shipping fees on mailing tubes, effectively making them unprofitable for many shippers.

Amazon workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, NY voted to form a union making it the first Amazon warehouse to successfully unionize.

GameStop voted to split its stock, increasing its total number of shares from 300M to 1B.

Google released a conversion measurement tool, a price insights tool, shipping and return overview pages, and a Shopping Experience Scorecard program to offer brands a “Trusted Store” badge.

Shopify's board announced plans to seek shareholder approval for a 10-for-1 stock split.

Shopify announced an integration with Strike to allow merchants to accept digital currency and save on processing fees through cash-final settlements.

Shopify and Ledger faced another lawsuit from crypto holders over the previous year's data breach, alleging that Shopify “repeatedly and profoundly failed to protect its customers’ identities.”

Two years after its launch, the online checkout startup Fast closed its doors for good after burning through the more than $120M it had raised in the previous two years.

Dropbox launched into open beta a platform called Dropbox Shop that allowed creators to sell digital content directly to their customers.

Tata launched a new super app called Tata Neu in attempt to rival Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart, each of which owns around one-third market share in India.

A Wix employee was murdered by a terrorist in Israel along with two other victims during a shooting spree in Tel Aviv.

Amazon issued a home entry compliance enforcement policy which enforced that it's against their policy to enter a customer's home unless certain criteria is met.

The founder of JD.com stepped down from his position as CEO and handed over the reins to the company's president Xu Lei.

Zilch partnered with Experian to update its BNPL affordability criteria to help them better assess whether their 2M customers are actually able to pay later. 

Amazon Prime got more expensive in Canada, going from $79/year to $99/year, just a few months after the company raised rates for its US subscribers.

Instacart came after users who removed tips post-delivery by requiring feedback if a tip is removed, deactivating customers who consistently removed tips, and reducing the tip-adjustment window. 

A former Block employee stole over 8 million names and account numbers of Cash App users in December, and it either took the company four months to discover or reveal the data breach.

Kroger made Bed Bath & Beyond products available on its website with plans for an in-store pilot.

Tencent shut down Penguin Esports, its video game streaming platform that rivaled Twitch, citing a change in business strategy, just months after Chinese regulators shut down a merger between Huya and DouYu. 

Shopify acquired the influencer marketing app, Dovetale, for an undisclosed amount, and made the app free for all merchants.

Meta announced that it is testing a way for content creators to sell virtual items and experiences within their adults-only Horizon Worlds 3D space, with plans to charge a 47.5% commission on sales.

Andy Jassy published his first annual shareholders letter.

The central government of India started working on a set of policies to bring about “algorithmic fairness” for consumers who shop online.

Wix Events released a tool for venues to create customized seating maps of their venues and enable customers to select and purchased assigned seats for those events.

Squarespace CFO announced plans to resign from her role on July 31, 2022 to pursue opportunities outside the company.

JPMorgan reported Q1 earnings this week, along with a $902M in new reserves, signaling a tough credit environment ahead.

Douyin, the original Chinese TikTok, expanded into the Chinese alcoholic drinks e-commerce market via short video clips and live-selling, combining entertainment with instant purchasing.

Square unveiled their next generation of Square Stand, featuring integrated contactless tap, chip and PIN payments technology, a professional design, and a new checkout flow.

Meesho, the Facebook-backed Indian e-commerce marketplace, laid off 150 employees from their grocery business, which was restructured and rebranded as Meesho Superstore last week.

Amazon renamed its free streaming app IMDb TV, which it introduced in 2019, to Freevee, with plans to add more original, lower-budget and house older Prime series and recently acquired MGM films.

Zilingo suspended CEO Ankiti Bose amid a financial probe from investors who were concerned with the startup's accounting practices, including how it kept records of transactions and revenue.

Amazon CEO said they won't be accepting crypto as payment anytime soon, but may get involved in the sale of NFTs.

Amazon announced Buy with Prime, a feature that allowed select Amazon merchants to sell their products directly from their own websites, while still offering Prime shopping benefits.

Amazon began testing a “Small Business” badge to identify products sold from third-party sellers that meet its definition of a small business.

Shopify began talks to buy the e-commerce fulfillment company, Deliverr, in a deal that valued the startup between $2.3B  to $2.7B.

Visa and Mastercard raised their interchange fees; increases that was originally scheduled to take effect in April 2021, but were postponed due to COVID. 

India's three largest logistics firms simultaneously increased shipment charges as much as 50% for orders received online from aggregators.

Twitter became the first company to sign up to Stripe's crypto service, offering a select group of Twitter creators to receive revenue they generate using its monetization features as cryptocurrency.

Shanghai's market regulators summoned 12 e-commerce platforms to discuss price gouging during the pandemic.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke dropped from 2nd to 11th on Canada's richest persons list, his fortune cut in half during the pandemic from its more than $10B peak.

BigCommerce and Avasam teamed up to launch Click2Launch, a direct dropshipping integration that will offer pre-installed themes and pre-loaded products on the BigCommerce platform.

After two years of litigation, Reliance Industries scrapped its plan to buy the Indian retailer, Future Group, which runs the country's biggest retail grocery chain, after much contestation from Amazon.

Jack Dorsey changed his title from CEO to Block head and chairperson. though the title change did not come with any change to his roles or responsibilities.

Amazon's plans to build a crazy looking 350′ tall helix-shaped tower as the centerpiece to its second headquarters were approved by the Arlington County Board in Northern Virginia.

Zappos named Amazon executive Ginny McCormick as its first chief marketing officer in its 23-year history, replacing former CEO and founder Tony Hsieh who passed away in 2020. 

Kredivo launched its Infinite Card in collaboration with MasterCard, a virtual card that could be used to pay on all e-commerce and online platforms.

Coinbase announced the long anticipated launch of its Coinbase NFT marketplace, which became available in beta test mode.

May 2022

WPP launched their own end-to-end e-commerce platform to handle the sales, logistics, and delivery of products sold by its clients. 

India soft launched its Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a government sponsored not-for-profit platform that allowed buyers and sellers to transact online, no matter what other application they use.

Wix partnered with LegalZoom to offer tools for merchants to legally form their businesses in the US.

Authentic Brands Group (ABG), owner of Forever 21, sued Bolt for over alleged failures to adequately deliver a new online checkout and customer loyalty solution.

Afterpay was sued by a customer in Maine who says she was hit with multiple bank fees from using the service and claims that Afterpay targets young and poor people with misleading fee promises.

Shopify opposed the text book mafia's second motion to compel discovery, saying that their request “needlessly harasses and significantly increases the burden on Shopify.”

Amazon closed six Whole Foods Market locations in four states, just two months after shutting down dozens of bookstores and gift shops around the US.

Square brought its lending programs for small business to Canada, using transaction data to proactively provide customized offers to eligible sellers.

The NSA re-awarded the “Wild and Stormy” cloud computing deal to Amazon Web Services after reviewing Microsoft's failed attempt to challenge the $10B contract.

Splitit negotiated with Google about extending their partnership to the U.S. consumer market, funded by its existing $150M facility with Goldman Sachs.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put new rules in place and became more aggressive about rule enforcement.

Lightspeed launched its Lightspeed Retail, an offering that combined POS, payments, and e-commerce into one platform.

Snapchat unveiled e-commerce capabilities during its Snap Partner Summit including software tools to create augmented reality (AR) shopping content.

Five years ago, the EU Commission fined Google €2.4B and ordered it to open up Google Shopping to external competition, however Google's share of ads in the UK started to rise again, reaching 53% in 2022.

Stripe launched Financial Connections which let merchants connect directly to their customers' bank accounts to access financial data that sped up certain kinds of transactions.

Meta opened its first brick-and-mortar retail store dubbed Meta Store in Burlingame, California, on the campus of its 17,000-employee Reality Labs arm.

Instagram started testing a “Get Quote” button with select business on its app.

The United States Postal Service introduced USPS Connect eCommerce service to simplify the process for e-commerce platforms to work directly with them.

Squarespace launched its second Australian ad campaign including “The Ideas Man” and “The Gunna Do It” spot, following creative people who had amazing ideas but had not yet made them a reality.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, L.L. Bean went dark on social media and wiped clean its Instagram account.

After 15 years, Amazon finally added support for the ePub format to its Kindle devices, while simultaneously dropping support for users to buy Kindle books via their Android app.

Starbucks announced plans to launch an NFT collection later this year, which would provide owners with access to exclusive content experiences and other benefits.

Amazon pledged to export $20B worth of locally made Indian goods by 2025, doubling its initial goal of $10B.

BizPay cut 30% of its workforce due to volatility in the tech sector and a challenging market ahead for fintechs.

Squarespace enabled merchants to sell NFTs directly on their own sites through the ARC plugin, which was built to simplify the process for retailers and shoppers to sell / buy NFTs.

Victoria's Secret started selling 120 of its beauty products on Amazon, including moisturizers, fragrances, and products from its Pink line which targets younger customers.

Shopify unveiled a new tool called Shopify Audiences, aimed at making it easier for merchants to find customers in a post-iOS 14 world.

Amazon announced that they would be shutting down Selz in order to focus on their new Buy with Prime service.

India's largest e-commerce marketplaces including Flipkart, Reliance Retail, and Amazon began talks to join the country's new Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

Amazon rolled out a new cashback offer designed to boost consumers' use of its Shopping Lists feature.

Klarna introduced virtual shopping tools for retailers to stream and video-chat with online customers.

IKEA announced its plans to spend €3B through 2023 to modify their new and existing stores so that they can double up as e-commerce distribution centers.

WordPress started accepting DOGE payments via a WooCommerce plugin called “Easy Dogecoin Gateway”.

Affirm extended its multi-year partnership with Shopify in the United States.

Shein's growth slowed to 60% last year from 250% growth in 2020.

Elon Musk put his $44B Twitter acquisition on hold while he waited for data on the number of fake accounts on the platform, which the company said was around 5%.

Alibaba laid off around 40% of its stuff in Russia as the ongoing Ukraine crisis continues to disrupt its cross-border business.

Square launched a number of new developer tools, including Cash App Pay, Bookings API and Checkout API.

Coupang emulated Amazon by raising membership fees for its 9M subscribers to improve its earnings, resulting in 225.7B won ($176M) in additional yearly revenue.

WordPress and WooCommerce market share shrunk, while the market shares of Wix, Squarespace, Adobe, and Webflow grew.

Agoda started offering interest-free credit card installments for travel with Visa, becoming the first online travel agency in the Asia Pacific region to offer BNPL payment options.

Visa rolled out Visa Ready, their new BNPL installments program, which enabled fintechs and issuers to integrate their BNPL solutions.

Match.com sued Google, claiming that they illegally built a monopoly on in-app purchases by requiring companies to use Google Play Billing for in-app purchases, which charges the developer up to 30% in fees.

Shopify started beta testing an early version of its new rewards program, Shop Cash, to some Shop app users in the U.S. 

Shopify added crypto payments integration via Crypto.com Pay, allowing merchants to accept over 20 tokens including BTC, ETH, CRO, SHIB, DOGE and APE.

Square rolled out its BNPL integration from Afterpay (which it acquired earlier this year for $29B) to its millions of in-person sellers in the U.S. and Australia who use their POS system.

WhatsApp started including a “Pay” button for users in Brazil and India, which allowed them to send money (with no fee) to friends and family.

YouTube teased upcoming features that it claimed would make it easier for viewers to discover and buy from brands including co-streams, brand-integrated shopping, and live redirects.

Shopify expanded its government affairs teams in the U.S. and Europe, recruiting top lobbyists with experience at major Silicon Valley firms.

Commercetools featured Will Arnett personifying a legacy commerce platform (like Salesforce, Oracle, and Adobe in their eyes), that's unwilling to adapt to modern demands in its first major advertising campaign.

Spotify tested a new feature that allowed artists to promote their NFTs on their profiles, as part of their efforts to enable artists to deepen their connections with fans on and off its platform.

The seventh and final former eBay employee pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to terrorize the founders of the publication EcommerceBytes for being critical of the company.

Shopify's plan to grant CEO Tobias Lütke a new “founder share” that would preserve his voting power was opposed by the shareholder advisory firm, Glass Lewis & Co.

Etsy announced that its search feature now considered keywords and phrases within your listing product descriptions when ranking your listings.

Amazon started looking to sublet at least 10M sq.ft. of warehouse space in New York, New Jersey, SoCal, and Atlanta after becoming stuck with too much warehouse capacity.

Amazon began testing a program that involved Flex drivers making deliveries from mall retailers.

Amazon sent out Astro robots to a group of test users to learn how they'd use the devices.

Albertsons deployed self-checkout carts in some of their stores to try and make in-person shopping easier as consumers head back to brick-and-mortar stores.

Google dove into their e-commerce strategy and showcased the features they are using to attract shoppers to their platform including visual search results, multisearch, 3D & AR search, and more.

TikTok announced a new integration with WooCommerce that enabled WooCommerce merchants to sync their store catalogs with their TikTok profile.

Shopify created a badge called “Shop Promise” that participating merchants could display to let customers know the product is covered by two-day shipping and an easy return policy.

India's consumer affairs ministry and Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) held a virtual meeting with e-commerce goliaths to discuss the magnitude of fake reviews on their platforms.

GoDaddy sent an e-mail to their bookkeeping software clients, which is used heavily by online sellers, particularly eBay sellers, announcing that they will be shutting down the service in 30 days.

Amazon tried to put off multiple FAA investigations into its drone crashes by claiming that the company has the authority to investigate its own crashes.

Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar clothing store, Amazon Style, in Glendale CA, which uses QR codes to make trying on clothes easier.

Microsoft launched its low-code website builder, Power Pages, as a stand-alone product to help developers design, manage, and publish sites for desktop and mobile.

June 2022

Affirm formed a partnership with Stripe, giving merchants the ability to integrate BNPL functionality directly into their online checkout and in-store POS systems.

Klarna started reporting its credit data to lenders in the U.K., in a landmark move for the BNPL industry.

Meta began testing digital collectibles with select US creators and collectors to share NFTs that they have created or bought.

Square announced that it will begin to support Apple's Tap to Pay technology later this year with a beta test arriving this summer.

Amazon sent out an e-mail to all their U.S. sellers in opposition of the proposed legislation, known as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), which they felt is particularly targeted at them.

USPS enacted an interim rule which required that packages containing pre-owned, damaged, and defective electronic devices containing lithium batteries be marked “Restricted Electronic Device” and “Surface Transportation Only”.

Deliverr, which at the time would soon be acquired by Shopify, announced a new returns service called Deliverr Returns with a goal of simplifying reverse logistics for merchant partners.

Amazon launched a “Request Invitation” program to stop price gougers from buying up low-supply products like gaming consoles and selling them elsewhere at higher prices, beginning with the PS5.

Amazon announced that it will stop operating its Kindle ebookstore in China on June 30, 2023.

TikTok launched a half-hour subscription comedy series that cost $4.99 to watch, but the first two episodes were released free to TikTok users.

Dave Clark, Amazon's CEO of Worldwide Consumer, stepped down after 23 years to pursue other opportunities.

Blue Apron, the subscription meal delivery platform, partnered with Walmart, to offer one-time purchases.

Shopify disclosed that some of its hardware products contained conflict minerals which originated from the democratic Republic of Congo, and may have benefited armed groups in the region.

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Commerce referred 200 online stores to the E-Commerce Violations Committee to impose legal penalties on them for violating their compliance standards for e-commerce reliability.

Lightspeed launched a B2B platform for North American fashion, outdoors, and sports retailers.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) began investigating deals between Flipkart and Amazon and their preferred sellers after finding documents that revealed financial linkages between them.

Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg stepped down from her position after 14 years.

Ford CEO Jim Farley announced that he wants the company's EVs to be sold online-only, with no dealer markups or other price negotiations, and remote pickup and delivery.

Albertsons began offering consumer-generated product ratings and reviews, powered by PowerReviews, live on several of its retail websites including Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw's.

Apple announced that it will officially launch its BNPL offering in the U.S. later this year, which will allow customers to shop with Apple Pay and split purchases into four payments every two weeks.

At the Annual and Special Meeting of shareholders held on June 7, shareholders approved Shopify's 10-for-1 split to take place on June 22nd.

Linktree revealed its new Linktree Marketplace, allowing its 25M users to add Link Apps and integrations on their mini-landing pages.

Twitter released a new feature called Product Drops, which allowed merchants to tease their upcoming product launches. 

Wix launched a solution for the hotel industry in partnership with HotelRunner to redevelop Wix Hotels.

The Information revealed that instead of using high-tech AI methods to complete purchases, Nate app transactions were actually handled manually by workers in the Philippines.

Spotify revealed at their Investor Day 2022 that it was intending to re-enter the audiobooks business later this year.

WooCommerce introduced a physical card reader for in-person payments that works with WooCommerce Payments and the WooCommerce Mobile App, and can sync with online store inventory.

Former Shopify exec, Erin Zipes, joined 1Password as chief legal officer, a newly created role.

Yotpo launched a subscriptions app to their lineup of Shopify apps.

Amazon announced a new featured called Virtual Try-On for Shoes that allows customers to visualize how a pair of new shoes will look on themselves from multiple angles using their mobile phone's camera.

Three top Chinese livestreaming influencers on the Taobao platform, each who had millions of followers, suddenly went dark and didn't return to the streaming platforms.

Amazon flew influencers out to a luxurious resort in Todos Santos, Mexico where they were wined and dined on the “Kindle Beach Oasis”.

Salesforce announced the launch of NFT Cloud, a service that lets brands create and sell NFTs.

Joshua Ma, a senior exec at ByteDance (owner of TikTok), voluntarily took time off during an internal investigation that began after making controversial remarks to employees at TikTok's London offices.

Uber Eats launched a product that allowed U.S. customers to have specialty food delivered from select merchants in New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Meta was hit with eight different lawsuits accusing its social media algorithm of causing real harm to young users across the U.S.

Amazon was sued by Whole Foods shoppers who claimed the company misled them and violated sate law when it ended free delivery from Whole Foods Markets for Prime members.

Walmart and Roku teamed up to bring together Roku's 61.3M subscribers with Walmart's more than 120k products and allow viewers to purchase items with their remotes.

Microsoft began testing a retail marketplace in the U.S. via its Bing search engine to compete with Google Shopping.

One million U.K. consumers cancelled their subscriptions to Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and other music streaming services. 

Samsung combined its Samsung Pay and Samsung Pass apps into a single product called Samsung Wallet.

Britain announced its plans to make BNPL firms carry out affordability checks, gain approval by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and ensure advertisements are fair and clear.

PayPal introduced a BNPL service called PayPal Pay Monthly, which allows users to break down the total cost of their purchase into monthly payments over a 6-24 month period.

Instacart renamed its subscription service Instacart+, previously called Instacart Express.

Amazon announced that it will start making Prime Air drone deliveries later this year to customers in Lockeford, CA, a town of 8.4 square miles with a population of about 3,500.

The body of Brett O'Grady, a 35-year-old Shopify exec who went missing seven months ago after going for a bike ride, was recovered in the water of the Rockcliffe Pond in Ottawa. 

Subhash Choudhary, co-founder and CTO of Dukaan, blasted Shopify on Twitter for its alleged performance issues, comparing the performance of sites running on both platforms.

Swyft, a Shopify-backed Canadian delivery startup, laid off 30% of its staff, just sixteen months after raising $17.5M in venture capital.

eBay raised the minimum ad rate for Promoted Listings Standard from 1% to 2% beginning July 11th — the second time in two weeks they raised advertising fees.

A leaked Amazon internal research memo from mid-2021 revealed that Amazon could run out of workers to hire for its warehouses by 2024.

Page A. Thompson, a former systems engineer at AWS that used a self-made tool to detect misconfigured AWS accounts and hack into the systems of 30 organizations, was found guilty of hacking and wire fraud.

eBay launched a beta release of its eBay Live Platform, a real-world-esque auction experience where buyers and sellers can engage with each other through live stream videos.

Klarna debuted its loyalty card feature, which let users store and access physical cards in digital versions.

Matt Mullenweg, the CEO and founder of WordPress, called GoDaddy a “parasitic company” and an “existential threat to WordPress' future” on Twitter, upsetting members of the company.

SeekingAlpha explored how MercadoLibre's payment solution was leading its growth and market dominance.

BigCommerce published its first industry trend report for the fashion category, an area of commerce that's seen much disruption in recent years.

eBay launched eBay Vault, a 31,000 sq.ft. temperature controlled facility for collectors to store their physical collectibles, beginning with graded trading cards valued at over $750.

Cloudflare suffered a major outage that caused disruption to a variety of services including Shopify, Discord, Fitbit, Grindr, DoorDash, Peleton, Coinbase, Feedly, and others.

Omnicom Media Group and Walmart struct a partnership to allow Omnicom agencies to execute cross-screen planning against Walmart audiences within the Omni marketing orchestration platform.

eBay closed its marketplace in Turkey, losing 4M active buyers in the process, three months after Amazon announced it would build its first fulfillment center in Turkey.

India's central bank cracked down on fintech startups by barring the practice of issuing prepaid cards and equipping them with credit lines. 

A class action lawsuit alleged that PayPal failed to reimburse Venmo customers who were defrauded and falsely marketed the service as a “safe way for consumers to send money.”

Amazon appointed Doug Herrington as the new CEO of its Worldwide Amazon Stores business (formerly known as Worldwide Consumer group), which manages the company's e-commerce marketplace.

IKEA launched an AI-driven interactive experience called IKEA Kreativ for their website and app that allows U.S. customers to design and visualize their own living spaces with digitalized furniture. 

Squarespace launched a tool to mint and sell NFTs through its link-in-bio app Unfold, allowing users to mint NFTs directly in the app and display them on their link-in-bio for sale.

FedEx announced it will soon take photos of packages at your doorstep to provide proof of delivery when they don't require a signature.

July 2022

TikTok began testing a dedicated “Shop” feed tab in Indonesia that let users browse and purchase products like clothing and electronics.

After 12 years, Pinterest's co-founder, Ben Silbermann, stepped down from his role as CEO, and the company replaced him with Bill Ready, a former Google commerce executive.

Franklin Chu of SmartBrief took an in-depth look at Douyin (aka: China's TikTok) and how it stacked up against rival livestream commerce platforms in China.

Google began testing a pros & cons snippet for product search results, a dynamic keyword insertion feature for Google Shopping Ads, and a “Discover” filter for the Google Shopping search side bar to identify minority owned businesses.

Volt Bank, the first exclusively online bank to obtain an Australian banking license, shut down after four years in business.

PayPal announced they would stop allowing Business accounts to receive funds via the Friends & Family transaction method, allowing only Personal accounts to receive these types of fee-free payments.

Amazon canceled or delayed plans for at least 13 facilities in its distribution network this year in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee and California.

Amazon launched a fleet of e-cargo bikes and on-foot delivery staff to replace thousands of van deliveries in London.

Shopify made a strategic investment and partnership with Sanity, a Norwegian CMS, to offer their merchants new capabilities to improve shopping experiences.

BigCommerce and Uncapped, a UK-based financing company, teamed up to help companies fund their migration to BigCommerce's platform with interest-free loans.

Wix integrated with Goodcall, a conversational AI platform that assists with call recording, spam blocking, and analytics, to help businesses manage call volumes and improve customer service.

Following complaints about dark patterns, Amazon Prime users in the EU became able to cancel their subscriptions with just two clicks.

Amazon started blocking LGBT-related products in the United Arab Emirates to comply with government rules in the country, which bans homosexuality.

Amazon announced Store Analytics, a new data tracking in its physical grocery stores that logs shoppers' habits and feeds the data back to brands to provide insights on their promotions.

Amazon, for the first time, announced plans to hold two Prime shopping events this year in July and October.

eBay filed two trademark applications that cover a wide range of products and services relating to NFTs and metaverses.

Bed Bath & Beyond fired Mark Tritton, the company's CEO, President, and board member, after the company saw sales drop by 25%, according to its Q1 financial report.

TikTok put its plans on hold to roll out its e-commerce Shop marketplace in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, and US later this year to focus on making the product a success in the UK.

Pinterest launched four e-commerce features including API for Shopping, Product Tagging on Pins, Video in Catalog, and Shop Tab on Business Profiles.

The European Parliament approved the Digital Services Act (DSA), aimed at fighting online hate and misinformation and providing a framework for e-commerce retailers to counter the circulation of counterfeit and dangerous goods.

Amazon and Grubhub partnered up to offer food delivery as a perk for millions of Amazon Prime members in the US.

WeShop launched what it calls the world’s first community-owned e-commerce platform and pledged to give away shares in the company every time a customer purchases goods through its platform.

Amazon and Etsy issued late shipment warnings to sellers for not shipping items on Juneteeth, which is now recognized as a Federal Holiday (ie: post offices are closed and the sellers couldn't ship).

BigCommerce entered Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Peru with fully localized tech and shopping experiences.

Andy Jassy celebrated his one-year anniversary as Amazon CEO.

Teller, a DeFi lender, introduced a BNPL service for NFTs like Bored Ape.

Onur “Ron” Aksoy, founder of Pro Network, was arrested for allegedly importing $1B worth of counterfeit Cisco equipment from China and selling it on Amazon and eBay.

Walmart made its InHome delivery service available to Walmart Plus subscribers for an extra $7/mo or $40/yr (previously available as a separate subscription costing $19.95/mo or $148/yr).

Authentic Brands Group (ABG) settled its lawsuit with Bolt out of court, with Forever 21 and Reebok emerging as new shareholders and the parties continuing to partner up to offer one-click checkout.

DHL eCommerce Solutions announced plans to invest £560M across its U.K. e-commerce operation, DHL Parcel U.K, following a 40% volume uplift since the start of 2020.

Zip, an Australian rival BNPL firm, called off its acquisition of Sezzle, a US BNPL firm, claiming “current macroeconomic and market conditions” as the reason behind terminating the deal.

Instagram launched a Payments in Chat feature that lets users purchase products from small businesses and track orders via direct messages.

Amazon claimed to have had the “best ever” Prime Day, with consumers worldwide spending $1.7B.

Amazon attempted to end a three-year investigation by antitrust regulators in the EU by offering to give more visibility to multiple sellers and prohibiting the user of non-public data to boost its own retail business.

Forage added the ability to its app for Shopify merchants to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) online, making it Shopify's first SNAP Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) payment gateway.

NBCUniversal launched a reality series called “Love Island USA” that offered clothing, home décor, cosmetics, and haircare products for sale in the show.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is ended a 30-year-old postage reselling program that allowed small businesses to send packages at sharply discounted postage rates.

Linkpop, the link-in-bio service Shopify launched in March, added new features including the ability to upload background image, apply unique styles to buttons and links, and embed music and videos.

Linktree launched a mobile app for users to edit their Linktree profiles, which previously had to be done via the website dashboard.

eBay announced its upcoming eBay Open seller conference on Facebook and got blasted in the comments by hundreds of sellers who said they were leaving the platform.

Shopify cancelled internships and job offers for people who were to begin working this fall.

StackCommerce named Don Leblanc as their new CEO, following TPG's Integrated Media securing a majority stake in the company and subsequent acquisitions of BrandCycle and The Fascination.

Doyin, China's version of TikTok that's owned by ByteDance, began testing a feature to compete with Alibaba in the food delivery market.

Amazon revamped its Dash Cart with new conveniences and tech upgrades for shoppers including the ability to carry more groceries and the ability for shoppers to wheel the cart to their cars. 

Walmart kicked off a deal with the EV company Canoo to purchase 4,500 of its last-mile delivery vehicles with one big caveat — the company can't sell any cars to Amazon!

Shopify used Apple's RoomPlan API to clear a room before filling it with furniture via Apple AR.

Walmart held the grand opening of its more than 1.8M square-foot e-commerce fulfillment center in Shippensburg, PA.

Amazon announced its plans to acquire One Medical, a US chain of primary care clinics, for $3.9B in an all cash transaction.

YouTube and Shopify teamed up to add live shopping tools that allowed viewers to purchase products without leaving the video platform.

Squarespace launched a new design platform called Fluid Engine that offers majorly improved drag-and-drop technology.

FedEx scaled back its Sunday delivery service in remote areas of the US after the e-commerce surge sparked by the pandemic cooled down.

Target began working to chip away at the costs of fulfilling online orders and grow the e-commerce sector of their business by opening more sortation centers, converting backrooms into warehouses, and upgrading their delivery vehicles.

Amazon began offering sellers a “holistic” way to diagnose their account health so that they can quickly see if their account is in danger of suspension for policy violations.

Anna Eskamani, who represents Florida's House District 47, asked Shopify to ban Libs of TikTok from selling merch on its platform for using the word “groomer” as a promo code in their shop. 

Wayfair was the only company among the top 10 e-commerce retailers to report revenue and profit declines in 2021.

Etsy placed their Chief Product Officer, Kruti Patel Goyal, as CEO of Depop, one year after acquiring the fashion resale marketplace.

TikTok extended a partnership agreement with Shopify that enabled brands to create shoppable video ads to the Middle East.

Kwik expanded its offering with the launch of KwikStore, a free e-commerce storefront that allows African business owners and merchants to quickly create their own online stores from a smartphone.

A court in India ordered the initiation of insolvency proceedings against Future Retail.

Amazon introduced a set of software tools to help developers more easily extend the capabilities of its Alexa voice assistant to new use cases.

Klarna entered into physical retail with the launch of “Klarna Oasis”, a two-day pop-up store in West Hollywood. 

Splitit, US-based BNPL provider, named two new seats on its board — Nandan Sheth, their current CEO, and Dan Charron, who most recently served as chairman of global business solutions for Fiserv.

T-Mobile introduced a new plan called Business Unlimited Ultimate+ that gave customers access to a phone plan coupled with Apple Business Essentials and AppleCare+.

Amazon's idea of offering one time passwords to receive expensive purchases backfired when customers provided the six-digit codes to their couriers and then didn't receive the items in the box.

Shopifreaks entered into a one year agreement with BigCommerce as its exclusive sponsor.

August 2022

Amazon partnered with select stores including PacSun, GNC, Superdry, and Diesel to offer same-day Prime deliveries in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Seattle, and Washington D.C.

Amazon reported $8.7B in ad revenue for the most recent quarter, up 18% from the same period last year. This makes Amazon the third largest digital ads network, after Google and Facebook.

Shopify cut 10% of its workforce, or roughly 1000 employees, mostly in recruiting, support, and sales.

Best Buy unveiled its first “digital-first, small format” store — a 5,000 sq.ft. retail space that offers a curated showroom of products across popular categories.

Viber, the messaging app owned by Rakuten, launched Payments on Viber, a service that let users set up digital wallets tied to their Viber accounts.

Amazon raised the price of its Prime subscription across Europe by up to 43% a year.

Roku launched an app that allowed Shopify merchants to build, buy, and measure TV streaming advertising campaigns.

Amazon shut down its personal file storage service to focus on photo and video storage.

osCommerce released a new v4 after many years of neglect that was based on True Loaded, software owned by the Holbi Group who acquired osCommerce last year.

Amazon Prime launched localized versions of its streaming service in Indonesia, Thailand, and The Philippines, in an attempt to boost its subscriber base in the three key Southeast Asian markets.

Apple subscription services were up 12% to more than $19B as demand for content across news, fitness, and gaming boost revenues.

Virgin Money, the UK-based bank founded by Richard Branson in 1995, entered the BNPL space with a new offering called Virgin Money Slyce, a credit card that allows customers to spread out payments.

BigCommerce received high honors as a top solution in both the 2022 Paradigm B2B Combine (Midmarket Edition) and 2022 Paradigm B2B Combine (Enterprise Edition) with 22 out of 24 total medals.

Instagram shut down its affiliate commerce program, which it began testing in July 2021, which enabled users to add product tags to their Instagram posts and receive a commission when peopled purchased.

Facebook shut down its live shopping feature to focus instead on Reels.

Gap Inc. Chief Growth Transformation Officer Sally Gilligan and The Container Store Chief Executive Officer Satish Malhotra joined the BigCommerce Board of Directors.

Shopify made a $100M investment in the e-mail marketing platform Klaviyo, while also making Klaviyo the recommended e-mail product for Shopify Plus and granting them early access to in-development features.

Amazon signed an agreement to acquire iRobot, makers of Roomba robot vacuums for $61 per share in an all-cash deal valued at $1.7B.

Squarespace added invoicing tools to their Scheduling portal to help customers manage the invoicing process and get paid for their time.

eBay had a glitch which displayed “free shipping” on sellers' listings where they didn't offer it causing some sellers to panic after noticing that all their recent Solds had free shipping attached.

FLOURYSH, a marketplace for discovering black brands, partnered with Shopify to elevate one million black-owned businesses by giving them access to a 120-day free trial and educational training.

Squarespace expanded their board of directors with the appointment of Neela Montgomery, who brought 20 years of global retail and consumer leadership experience.

Salesforce shut down its Hong Kong office as it expanded its customer relationship management software in China.

DoorDash reported $1.6B in Q2, up 30% from the same period a year ago and that total orders it delivered grew 23% YoY to 426M, marking a record high. 

Gadget announced a product called Connections, which is designed to help app makers connect their software to the APIs of third-party platforms, starting with Shopify's app store.

Hundreds of Amazon workers at several UK warehouses held protests after being given a 42 cents an hour pay raise, despite soaring inflation.

Splitit, a US-based BNPL service, partnered with letus, a Canada-based payments platform, to integrate its Installments-as-a-Service for the property rental market.

Google simplified its reusable tag design to improve data quality, now relying on one reusable tag build on a global site tag, which lets advertisers send event data to Analytics, Ads, and Marketing Platform.

Meta partnered with DoorDash to deliver Marketplace items up to 15 miles away, as long as the items fit within the trunk of a car.

Instacart launched an OrderUp feature that let user order from two retailers with one delivery fee.

Mastercard automatically enrolled merchants in its BNPL program, Mastercard Installments, which caused concerns with merchants.

Microsoft decided to join India's Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which India hoped would make it harder for Amazon and Walmart to dominate e-commerce in their country.

Salesforce announced Composable Storefront, a fully-customizable, headless digital storefront made available in a progressive web app (PWA) toolkit.

Wix began implementing cost reduction measures in hopes to achieve $150M in annualized savings.

Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, criticized how long it took for the company to create two pages using their own Gutenberg Block Editor.

Walmart rewarded Affirm users who spent more than $300 on a single purchase with a free trial of Walmart+.

The FTC referred to data brokering as “commercial surveillance” and announced that it will be exploring whether to crack down on big tech's data gathering practices. 

eBay and Etsy charged sellers a commission fee on shipping above and beyond payment-processing charges, resulting in a “shipping tax” when carriers raised fees during the holidays.

fabric, appointed Sandra Campos to its Board of Directors, who most recently served as CEO of Diane von Furstenberg.

Shoppable released Instant Shop in a beta launch, a tool that lets creators monetize their online presence with a personalized e-commerce shop, curating products from eligible brands and retailers.

Citigroup was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that they caused $70M in trading losses earlier this year after botching large trade orders involving shares of Shopify and Colgate-Palmolive.

Wix integrated Google’s URL Inspection API, which was launched in January, directly into their new Wix Site Inspection Tool.

QuickBooks launched a B2B marketplace called Trada that connects retailers with brands and wholesale sellers.

Amazon partnered with mental health company Ginger to offer behavioral health options through Amazon Care.

WIN.IT America, Inc, the US branch of the Hong Kong-based e-commerce company, was ordered by The Department of Labor to pay warehouse workers in Kentucky and California more than $1M in back wages.

Doritos began selling its new Classic Ketchup and Spicy Mustard chip flavors exclusively online in its latest e-commerce play.

Papmall, a B2B e-commerce platform, expanded its model and delivery locations, and added BNPL and crypto payments.

Shopify released a tool called Shopify Collabs to enable content creators to partner with Shopify merchants to build curated shops, share products, and earn commissions.

MercadoLibre announced the creation of a new cryptocurrency called MercadoCoin, which would initially be implemented in its loyalty program.

Amazon began internally testing a vertical photo and video feed known as “Inspire” in its app among staff.

TikTok launched a new suite of ad tools as part of their latest endeavor to bring hyper-personalized product recommendations to users' For You Pages.

Pinterest launched a new streamlined conversion process for Shopify merchants that made it faster for users to buy direct from Pin listings.

Sezzle launched a direct integration with Klaviyo to let merchants offer BNPL payment options as shoppers are ready to abandon their carts.

Walmart's last-mile delivery service, Walmart GoLocal, which leverages Walmart's own delivery platform to service other merchants, topped 1M deliveries in its first year.

BigCommerce made BNPL available to all its merchants in a deal with Affirm.

Shopify partnered with Urb-it, a sustainable logistics provider, to offer merchants zero-emission last mile delivery options in European cities.

The FTC began investigating Amazon over its cancellation process (among other things), and company executives said that they found it burdensome to appear in court.

DoorDash ended its partnership with Walmart after more than four years of delivering products to customers.

Woola, an Estonia-based startup, claimed that 90% of wool produced in Europe is unused because it is too course to be used for yarn, and that paired with paper, could be used for plastic-free protective packaging.

Qantas, the Australian flag carrier, announced its plans to purchase six Airbus A321 aircrafts and convert them to freighters, to keep up with the increase in demand for cargo space powered by e-commerce.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau asked a federal judge to force Block to fully comply with its investigative demands relating to its Cash App payments tool.

Amazon raised seller fees from Oct 15 through Jan 14 to contend with rising costs, marking the first time Amazon has hiked seller fees during the holidays. 

Amazon paused the rollout of self-checkout Amazon Fresh stores following disappointing sales.

Pinduoduo, one of China's largest e-commerce marketplaces known for selling goods at rock-bottom prices, announced its plans to expand into the US next month.

Refersion launched Amazon Connect, a first-of-its-kind affiliate marketing solution for brands that sell on Amazon Marketplace.

BigCommerce partnered with A2X to integrate their account app onto their e-commerce platform.

Meta, India’s Reliance Retail, and Jio Platforms brought grocery shopping to WhatsApp in what they said was a global-first end-to-end shopping experience on the platform.

Walmart introduced cash back in the form of digital rewards for Walmart+ members that can be used on future Walmart purchases. 

BigCommerce partnered with SheerID, an identity marketing technology provider, to enable retailers to provide exclusive offers and discounts to specific customers based on demographic and profession.

Levi Strauss & Co. launched a patent-pending AI and machine learning-driven e-commerce solution aimed at optimizing inventory management and streamlining order fulfillment.

Instacart started enlisting celebrities and influencers to create shopping lists called Carts, which displayed lists of grocery items that customers can add to their own carts. 

Bonanza launched a webstore which they call “an easy Shopify alternative” to compete in the e-commerce space.

Peloton began selling its Bike and Guide, along with apparel, on Amazon, with free white-glove delivery and installation (which Peloton started charging an extra $250-350 for earlier this year).

Shopify Capital entered the Australian market, offering up to $2.5M AUD in funds to merchants. 

BigCommerce was selected as an approved e-commerce technology supplier for the UK government-backed Help to Grow: Digital Scheme.

André 3000 starred in Supreme’s upcoming Fall/Winter 2022 campaign, where the musician appeared wearing the classic Supreme logo tee with a distressed olive military jacket, red beanie, and overalls.

Amazon India signed an agreement with Rajasthan Grameen Aajeevika Vikas Parishad (RGAVP) to support the growth of women artisans and Self Help groups across the state. 

Packable, the parent company of the top-ranking Amazon seller, Pharmapacks, ceased operations, laying off employees, and liquidating, after a failed effort to go public through a SPAC last year. 

Affirm reported a 96% increase in active users to 14M during the period ending on June 30, compared to 7.1M for the same period a year ago.

Gap Inc. opened an 850k sq.ft. high tech fulfillment center in Longview, Texas to support its rapidly growing e-commerce sales.

Zip, the Australia-based BNPL provider, exiting the UK in the wake of a $701.3M loss, after recently announcing that it would exit Singapore.

Shopify introduced a bundled shipping insurance offering for US merchants in partnership with Shipsurance, allowing merchants to purchase shipping insurance to cover against loss, theft, or damage.

Cash App and Block were sued in a class action lawsuit alleging that the company failed to safeguard the information of their customers during a Dec 2021 data breach.

ShopX, a B2B commerce company in India, shut down operations after not generating enough cash flow.

Uber and AMC Theatres partnered with the e-commerce company Rokt to allow the companies to deliver relevant messaging at a time when the consumer is most likely to make an additional purchase. 

The former OpenSea product manager who was charged with wire fraud and money laundering for using his inside knowledge to buy and sell NFTs filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that NFTs are neither securities or commodities, so no insider trading could have taken place.

September 2022

Shopify warned merchants that using Amazon's Buy with Prime service removed their ability to protect against fraudulent orders which could lead to stolen customer data.

Amazon announced the launch of Alexa Game Control, allowing you to play games with your voice.

Analysts predicted that Amazon Video could eventually surpass Netflix, Hulu, and Disney based on Amazon's use of an e-commerce approach to streaming service.

Walmart invited sellers based in Canada to join its American marketplace, which serves over 120M customers.

Pinduoduo launched its new U.S. online shopping site, Temu, which listed items across a number of categories including clothing, jewelry, pet supplies, and home & garden. 

Erin Pelton, former Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, Domestic Policy Council at The White House, joined Shopify to oversee communications and public affairs.

Jason Tigas, developer advocate at Shopify, joined Ripple, a San Francisco-based blockchain.

Deck Commerce, an order management system for D2C retailers and brands, expanded its Board of Directors with the addition of Melanie Kalemba, former leader at BigCommerce and Amazon.

Rumored circulated that Etsy was planning to give extra perks to sellers who qualify for its Star Seller program that it launched last year, including fee discounts, filtered results, and boosted visibility.

Amazon announced plans close down Amazon Care, its home-grown urgent and primary care offering, effective Dec 31, 2022, following the acquisition of One Medical.

A United States federal judge awarded Express Mobile $40M in damages after finding that Shopify infringed upon three of their patents related to software for providing content to mobile devices.

The FTC began a review into Amazon's planned acquisition of iRobot Corp to consider if the deal violated antitrust law and whether it would illegally boost Amazon's market share in the connected device market. 

A couple who married on Aug 21 had an Amazon-themed wedding to commemorate how e-commerce brought them together.

Wix partnered with Choice to bring ACH electronic funds transfer payments to U.S. based merchants.

Qatar Central Bank issued the first license for digital payments to two companies that provide electronic payment services – iPay and Ooredoo.

According to the latest Adobe Digital Price Index, online inflation returned in August, after taking a brief break in July, with prices rising 0.4% in August, after dropping 1.0% on an annual basis in July.

Revolut launched a one-click payment feature called Revolut Pay in a bid to compete against rivals like PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Shop Pay.

Shopify named Morgan Stanley investment banker Jeff Hoffmeister as its next CFO, and appointed Kaz Nejatian, VP of product, to COO.

Tensions heated up between Amazon and Walmart in South Africa, an attractive market for both retailers where total online sales in the country increased by 55%  in 2020 and 42% in 2021.

Two brothers were fired from their roles as CEO and COO of the Egyptian startup, Capiter after allegedly mismanaging funds, and then allegedly fled the country.

Walmart owned Flipkart introduced new features and design changes on its app to attract customers in India including image search, live commerce, virtual try-ons, and a brand mall.

Metapack, a UK delivery platform, partnered with Zedify, a last mile delivery startup, to offer same day and next day delivery via its bicycle courier network.

Snap employees began joking that the company was turning itself into “Snapazon”, referencing the fact that former Amazon executives have ascended to key roles in the company and obsessing over metrics. 

Amazon discussed partnering with pharmacies in Japan to deliver medications in 2023.

Gamestop announced a strategic partnership with the crypto exchange FTX to collaboratively work on new e-commerce and online marketing initiatives. LOL hindsight's 20/20 I guess.

Alibaba's Lazada came together with major brands like HP and BMW to launch the Southeast Asia eCommerce Anti-Counterfeiting Working Group (SeCA Working Group), a consortium committed to addressing the rapidly evolving issues of counterfeit trade in online retail.

Amazon's Alexa saw questions in Hindi go up by 52% in the previous year, including voice requests made in “Hinglish”. 

Visa, DailyPay and The Bancorp Bank launched a reloadable prepaid card that offers a way for employees to access a portion of their salaries earlier than the traditional two-week pay cycle.

15 subcontracted Amazon drivers in Nagasaki protested the long hours and excessive number of deliveries in the absence of overtime pay, and blamed Amazon’s AI algorithms for exacerbating their plight.

Visa, Mastercard, and AMEX started separately categorizing sales at gun shops, adopting the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales.

Dell, Best Buy, Ford, Pottery Barn, Nike, Patagonia, Match, Twitch and other companies removed Facebook login from their websites after less and less visitors were using it.

Microsoft announced Multi-platform, an all-in-one feature available in Smart Campaigns that lets users run ads in Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Instagram all through the Microsoft interface.

ByteDance shut down their Douyin Box app and platform because their regular Douyin app (non-Box app) already served as a one-stop shop.

The median salary of founders of unicorn e-commerce startups in India was INR 64 Lakh ($80,678) in 2021, a jump of 27.8% from INR 50 Lakh ($63,029) in 2020.

Amazon struck a $13B deal with the NFL to make it the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football, following a four year run at FOX, marking the league's first all-digital rights agreement.

Shopify launched Shopify Markets Pro, an expanded integration with Global E-Online (GLBE), of which Shopify took a $193M pre-IPO stake in the company in May 2021.

Walmart unveiled a virtual try-on option called “Be Your Own Model” that uses AR and AI to give customers a realistic simulation of what clothing will look like on them based on a photo of themselves.

BigCommerce announced a strategic partnership with cryptocurrency leaders BitPay and CoinPayments to deliver crypto payment solutions to merchants in select countries.

Instacart launched Connected Stores, a suite of technologies to help retailers create a personalized experience both online and in-store including an updated Caper Carts, Scan & Pay, Carrot Tags, and Out of Stock insights.

Bold Commerce announced its newest curbside checkout feature for brick-and-mortar and omnichannel retailers called Curb Up, which enables retailers to capture high-margin impulse purchases.

Google expanded the eligibility for enhanced product experiences in Google Search to more e-commerce websites using Product structured data.

Amazon give merchants in the U.S. and U.K. free software for managing orders both on and off its platform, powered by Veeqo, a shipping software firm it acquired in March.

S&P DJI launched the S&P Global E-Commerce Ecosystem Index, designed to measure the performance of 50 companies in e-commerce-related businesses from global markets. 

Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, and his family transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3B, to a nonprofit created to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.

Salesforce previewed new automation features and data integrations planned for its Customer 360 platform, which tie together CDP data for sales, marketing, service, and e-commerce.

Shopify changed its compensation practices to let staff decide how much of their pay will be cash versus equity.

Automattic released WooCommerce 6.9, which was quickly followed up with WooCommerce 6.9.1 after a bug caused stores to produce a warning or a fatal error depending on the site's PHP version.

Data from GoKwik showed that 64% of all orders placed on its network used cash on delivery in Q2 2022, proving that it's still the most preferred payment option among e-commerce users in India.

California sued Amazon, accusing it of coercing third-party sellers into agreeing not to sell their products cheaper anywhere else.

Amazon Prime Video pulled off its first Thursday Night Football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers.

Walmart+ began offering the streaming subscription service Paramount+ at no extra cost to their membership program.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a report suggesting that BNPL companies must be subjected to stricter oversight.

Shopee, the Singapore-based e-commerce platform that was supposed to be Southeast Asia's answer to Amazon, began laying off staff and closing operations in Latin America amid widening losses.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) signed an agreement for fintech cooperation. 

Adyen, a payment processor and acquirer, announced that it will start letting its US merchants accept online payments via Cash App Pay, starting next year. 

Starbucks and DoorDash began testing delivery in stores in Sacramento and Houston through the DoorDash app.

Amazon announced that it will be boosting pay and adding benefits for some delivery drivers after workers protested earlier this year amid rising gas prices.

An Indian court directed Amazon to delist the Pakistani versions of Rooh Afza, a popular Indian summer drink concentrate that has been consumed in the country for more than a century.

ONE, a fintech backed by Walmart, introduced checking accounts to thousands of Walmart employees and a small percentage of its online customers for beta testing.

Major delivery companies like FedEx, UPS, USPS, and Amazon became stuck with too much delivery capacity.

BigCommerce announced its launch on Google Cloud Marketplace, powered by Tackle.io.

Meta released an ad type that enables brands to collaborate with local retail partners that sell their product in order to maximize direct response on their ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Spotify introduced 300k audiobook titles to U.S. subscribers on a per-book fee model.

Just two weeks after launching its online marketplace in the US, the website Temu became the most widely used Android shopping app, ranked first among shopping apps in the Google Play Store.

Wix announced an integratoin with Semrush to allow Wix users to access their SEO keyword data directly through the dashboard. 

France imposed a minimum delivery fee of €3 for online book orders of less than €35 to level the playing field for independent bookstores who are struggling to compete with Amazon.

Amazon updated its e-book return policy to now block automatic returns on e-books that are more than 10% read, following decisions with the Authors Guild.

Revolut announced its expansion into Mexico and Brazil, with a plan to hire 250 new employees in both countries by 2025.

A software bug caused Amazon to overstate corporate employees' raise packages, and many employees who just got promoted found out that their raise packages wouldn't actually be as high as they thought.

Square launched its first integration with Afterpay in Canada, offering BNPL functionality to sellers using their e-commerce products. Affirm also announced at practically the same time that they are also expanding to Canada. 

Amazon Air greatly reduced its overall rate of expansion since March in response to a slowdown in e-commerce sales figures.

Meta introduced a new Facebook Reels API that allows developers to integrate a “Share to Reels” feature as an attempt to bring greater user-accessibility to their short-form video product.

Wegmans announced that its discontinuing its Scan app because of an unexpectedly large amount of product loss.

46 US states sought to revive the anti-competition case to break up Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, which was squashed due to a legal stipulation around the timing of the court filing.

October 2022

TikTok began talking with TalkShopLive, a California-based provider of live commerce tech, to provide the infrastructure for the live shopping features in the U.S.

Twitter launched a scrollable TikTok-like video feed on its platform, beginning with iOS users.

Shopify launched POS Go, a new handheld tool that looks like a cell phone with a built-in card reader at the bottom. 

Google introduced several new features including Multisearch Near Me, Neighborhood Vibe, and a new visual search experience.

Google also teased the upcoming launches of two new Maps features and revamped its Play Store to help users better discover and install apps to other devices.

Walmart launched two new Roblox experiences including a colorful amusement park called Walmart Land and Universe of Play for younger players.

Instagram made it harder to find the Shop tab, which used to be on the bottom of the navigation bar, by hiding it within the Settings menu.

Amazon unveiled several new or updated devices at its invite-only, virtual event including Kindle Scribe, Halo Rise, Echo Dot (5th Gen), Echo Studio, Echo Auto (2nd Gen) and more.

Starting on January 30, 2023, Meta announced it will no longer support the ability for sellers to create vehicle & real estate / rentals listings using a Facebook business Page.

Amazon reported that it will spend $1B to increase wages for hourly workers in the US.

Sky.Garden, Kenya’s Amazon-style marketplace, faced closure after funding fell through.

Etsy allowed merchants to set different return policies for each listing in their shop instead of just one return policy for your entire shop.

Meta made it easier for users to switch between Facebook and Instagram accounts through a new profile switching tool.

WhatsApp rolled out links for video calls which allow users to share links with family and friends to join the call.

Two and a half years after unveiling Google Stadia, the game streaming service officially shut down.

WooCommerce released Blocks 8.6.0 with support for a new block that displays cross-sells for products within the customer's cart.

Koji, a link-in-bio platform, announced the launch of Shopify Storefront, a new app that lets creators import and sell their Shopify products inside of their Koji profile.

Amazon India rolled out a live-streaming video feature for promoting products on its shopping platform, employing a format popular in China of teaming with social media influencers to host live-streams.

Deliveroo began experimenting with opening up its dark stores in Central London, where customers don't pick their own items but instead use their phones to order groceries which are then picked and packed. 

A judge in Italy canceled the €200M retail collusion fine levied against Apple and Amazon in Nov 2021 over accusations that the two cooperated to prevent price cuts from other vendors.

Square launched Tap to Pay on iPhone to sellers in the US, available within the Square POS iOS app.

China's Cosco Group and Alibaba logistics unit Cainiao teamed up to offer an end-to-end intercontinental fulfillment of merchandise sold by Alibaba to European consumers.

Iliad, the telecom company owned by French billionaire Xavier Niel, launched a payment subsidiary called Stancer, which will be focused on lowering transaction fees.

European Union lawmakers gave final approval to the Digital Services Act (DSA), marking the first major update to the legal framework for digital services since the year 2000.

Meta announced that it's testing increasing its ad load on Instagram with the launch of two new ad slots on the Explore Home Page and Profile Feeds.

BigCommerce announced that Rosie Rivel joined the company as its first Chief Information Officer.

Meta shut down Bulletin, its newsletter platform that was supposed to rival Substack, less than two years after its launch. 

DHL and BigCommerce partnered up to grant merchants access to the DHL Express delivery network and make merchants eligible for perks like discounted rates.

Afterpay, now owned by Block, introduced new payment options that give consumers more time to pay.

Goodwill launched an online marketplace called GoodwillFinds that offers everything from used clothes to oddities like a crystal bowling ball with a skull.

Amazon announced that it is investing more than €1B to add thousands more electric trucks, vans, and cargo bikes to its fleet of delivery vehicles across Europe over the next five years.

Google Shopping began testing a new chat feature in the product search results.

Heyday, the conversational AI platform purchased by Hootsuite for $48M in 2021, integrated Instagram DM and Facebook Messenger within its e-commerce Shopify chatbot app.

Shopify settled allegations with 5 major publishers who claim that Shopify allowed the sale of pirated textbooks and test materials on their platform and profited from doing so.

eBay announced that it will pull its app from the Shopify app store on Jan 1, 2023, five years after its launch.

Klaviyo announced a new integration with Wix to provide users with their customer relationship tools.

Wish began leveraging the eDesk e-commerce customer support platform to provide retailers with more tools and resources to assist shoppers.

E-commerce companies began ramping up hiring in India to meet the demand during the festival season.

A Los Angeles man filed a class action lawsuit against Texas Pete for not actually being made in Texas, but in North Carolina.

Google detailed its work on Imagen Video, an AI system comparable to OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion that can generate video clips given a text prompt.

Senator Elizabeth Warren reported that Zelle is “rampant with fraud and theft” and has repaid less than $3M of the over $200M in fraud in 2021 and early 2022. 

Parents sued Amazon for selling “suicide kits” to teenagers who died by suicide after Amazon allegedly bundled items for purchase together with instructions on how to use the chemical to attempt suicide.

Twitter launched its new Edit button in the U.S. through its Twitter Blue subscription.

Grubhub and Gopuff partnered to provide delivery of grocery items, alcohol, and essential items.

Neeva, an ad-free search engine launched last year by a former Google engineer, launched in Europe, beginning with the U.K., France, and Germany.

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke purchased close to $3M in Coinbase shares during the past 60 days.

The University of Illinois partnered with Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft on the Speech Accessibility Project, which aims to improve voice recognition for communities with disabilities.

United Arab Emirates‘ total e-commerce sales reached $4.8B in 2021, up 84% from 2019, and is forecast to reach $9.2B by 2026 according to Dubai Chamber of Commerce.

It was revealed via LinkedIn posts that TikTok is planning to build an “international e-commerce fulfillment system” that will include warehousing, customs clearings and supply chain systems.

Shopify added a new tax tool to its offerings to help simplify the sales tax collection and remittance process for U.S. merchants.

Amazon faced a wave of walkouts and strikes as it head into the holiday season this year, while workers demanded better treatment, pay, and an end to retaliatory behavior.

Apple announced that it will soon allow iPhone users to put their Daily Cash rewards from their Apple Card and additional funds from separate bank accounts into an interest-yielding savings account.

eBay inserted a video ad for its eBay Vault alongside a seller's photos on the listing page, real estate that sellers were previously in control of within their own listings.

Affirm predicted that only 42% of Americans would buy gifts for co-workers this year, down from 79% last year, as they begin to dial back their spending.

Target rolled out the ability for customers to pay online with their SNAP benefits when shopping for groceries.

Amazon's president of hardware research and development group, Gregg Zehr, and Tom Taylor, senior VP of Amazon Alexa, retired after over a decade each with the company.

Squarespace poached Nathan Gooden from Amazon to serve as their new CFO, who most recently served as CFO of Amazon's Alexa and Echo units since 2017.

Amazon shut down Amazon Explore, a virtual tour product launched during the pandemic where users could pay for guided tours of destinations around the world.

Zoetop, which owns fast-fashion brands Shein and Romwe, forked out $1.9M after account data belonging to 46M customers was stolen in 2018.

Google announced that it will begin allowing some customers to pay for cloud services with cryptocurrency early next year using Coinbase Prime.

OpenSea launched natively on the Avalanche blockchain.

Shopify expanded its ERP program, introduced a year ago, to enable European partners to join and build direct integrations to its platform.

E-commerce brands in the UK reined in generous return policies ahead of the holiday season, now demanding customers pay for returning unwanted goods.

Marvel launched a lifestyle catalog app for Shopify merchants, which enables them to offer officially licensed Marvel products to their customers.

Global e-commerce fraud loss was estimated to reach over $41B by the end of 2022, with North America being the largest target for cybercriminals, accounting for over 42% of global fraud.

Shopify announced that it will no longer send order-related SMS on behalf of merchants to customers starting in 2023.

U.K.-based food delivery service Deliveroo began offering BNPL via Klarna for customers to pay for their lunch in multiple installments.

PayPal replaced the Honey Gold rewards from the Honey extension it acquired in 2019 with its new PayPal Rewards, where consumers can track and redeem their points directly inside the PayPal app.

Walmart launched a new content creation platform to allow influencers and other creators to make social media posts and earn commission on the products they sell, powered by Impact.com.

Klarna announced a number of product innovations branded under the Klarna Spotlight name, including a search tool, shoppable vidoe stream, upgraded CO2 and charitable donation, and a creator platform.

Walmart expanded its Black Friday deals for the entire month of November in an effort to get customers spending more, at a time when many shoppers are cutting back.

The FTC voted 3-1 to solicit public comment on the potential for new regulations around fake reviews online, calling for comments about the prevalence of fake reviews and how they affect consumers.

Flipkart, in partnership with Web3 entertainment firm eDAO, announced the launch of Flipverse, a metaverse space where consumers can discover products in a photorealistic virtual destination.

Uber launched a new advertising unit that will enable brands to deliver ads to their 122M monthly active users.

Shopify hired Elwood Edwards, the iconic voice behind AOL's “You've got mail” to inform sellers that “You've got sales” as part of its new campaign.

Meesho, a Bengaluru-based social commerce platform backed by Meta, beat Amazon and Walmart when it comes to attracting new shoppers in India, becoming the world’s most-downloaded shopping app.

Amazon reported that over half a dozen hardware vendors indicated that they cannot enter into a TV manufacturing relationship with them over fear of retaliation from Google.

Amazon announced that it will stop supporting its Glow video calling device for kids.

Amazon shut down Fabric.com, one of the largest online fabric stores that it acquired in 2008.

Visa brought its BNPL program to more Canadian retailers through its Visa Installments and Visa Direct solutions.

Amazon launched a home insurance portal in Britain called Amazon Insurance Store, which includes customer reviews and ratings on insurance companies and the rate at which the claims were accepted.

Revolut launched Homes, a holiday home rental feature with cashback in travel services, as part of its accommodation booking service, Revolut Stays.

Sun Finance launched its new BNPL service in Latvia, where the company's headquarters are located.

Taobao announced that it will launch an updated version of its senior citizen shopping feature that will include new features to protect senior customers' rights.

JD opened a service section dedicated to educating elderly shoppers at its JD Home Appliance Flagship store in Deyang, Sichuan.

Advertising Standards Association (ASA) banned a series of Instagram posts by Clearpay for being “socially irresponsible” and “making light” of not having self-control when shopping.

The European Commission banned Google from displaying its own shopping comparison ads units in search results to make good on its 2017 antitrust decision against Google Shopping abusing its dominance.

Square launched Square for Retail and Square Appointments, enabling sellers to offer on-the-go checkout experiences at almost any location throughout the store.

Karma rolled out a new payment feature called Pay with Karma that offers one-swipe purchases with multiple payment options. 

Pinterest Trends Tool expanded with a new API for Conversions that gives advertisers a full view of their campaign performance and actions their audience took on the site.

Jane Technologies launched its new iOS app called Jan app, which enables users to discover cannabis products based on local inventory, verified reviews, feelings & effects, and personalized recommendations.

Uber Eats and Leafly partnered to bring cannabis delivery to Toronto, marking the first time cannabis delivery will be available on a major third-party delivery platform in the world.

UPS raised the cost of shipping by almost 7% after Christmas to match FedEx's increase for 2023, while also raising fees for late payments and address corrections.

YouTube expanded its access to social shopping tools, which was previously in beta with just 1000 creators, so that more creators can make their videos shoppable.

Etsy introduced Boosted Listings on its Depop marketplace, which it acquired last year for $1.6B. charging sellers 8% when an item is sold.

November 2022

Amazon announced its new advertising capabilities at its Unboxed event in New York which included rewarded sponsored display, ads for brands that don't sell on AMazon, display video creatives, and more.

Walmart also introduced new features ahead of the holiday season including virtual queuing, buy now buttons, dynamic search results, and dynamic product pages.

Rosie Rivel joined BigCommerce as its first Chief Information Officer to lead BigCommerce’s business applications and information technology teams.

Sales of iPhones and services were softer than expected last quarter, but Apple’s revenue and profit topped analysts’ estimates.

Mastercard Inc. saw spending growth slow to its lowest level in more than a year as the company said it’s watching the impact of inflation and other geopolitical risks on its business.

Amazon estimated that the strong dollar cost it $900M more than expected when looking at net sales, contributing to its dismal Q3 earnings performance.

Ben Brody, a tech policy reporter at Proctocol, did some investigating and discovered questionable e-mail marketing strategies from Square.

MrBeast partnered with Shopify to give the Top 10 best business pitches $10k on TikTok.

Elon Musk completed his $44B deal to buy Twitter on Thursday and quickly began terminating employees including the company's CEO, CFO, and Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gadde.

Amazon announced plans to delist Appario Retail, a larger seller in which it maintains a stake, from the marketplace, following allegations that some sellers received preferential treatment.

The number of Vietnamese sellers increased 80% YoY on Amazon, with nearly 10M products from the country sold to customers worldwide from Sep 2021 to Aug 2022.

Amazon and Google struck a deal that allowed Amazon to work with manufacturers like TCL, which also makes Android TVs and phones, after reported fear of retaliation from Google.

Zip announced the availability of Zip Card, issued by WebBank, the newest BNPL product in its portfolio.

Visa ramped up growth of Visa Debit and Visa Direct, its global direct-debit payments services that operates in near-real time, in preparation for a recession.

Shipt, a delivery service owned by Target, was sued by the Attorney General of Washington DC for allegedly unlawfully misclassifying employees as independent contractors to avoid paying for worker benefits.

Aldi announced that it's developing its own e-commerce platform to allow shoppers to purchase groceries directly online.

Huawei, the fifth largest patent holder in the US, sued Amazon and Compal Electronics, as well as several of their subsidiaries, over e-ink patents.

Zara's idea to launch a pre-owned marketplace of its goods was met with mixed reactions by journalists, who said that they should be focused on reducing waste more than introducing recommerce initiatives.

Former Argo Chief Technology Officer Perry Hothi joined Block to advise on the development of the company’s Bitcoin mining division.

Yon Nuta joined the headless commerce platform fabric as its first Chief Product Officer where he will bring his data-driven approach to lead product vision and development.

Bolt released a new virtual Shopper Assistant, which integrates into a retailer's site and lets customers get a discount for entering their e-mail into the pop up.

Jifiti, a US-based fintech that powers point-of-sale financing for banks, lenders, and merchants, rolled out a new white label B2B BNPL service.

Wix became an official partner of React Native, an open source UI software framework originally developed by Facebook.

Perfume's Club, a Spanish online beauty product store, turned its platform into a marketplace, with plans to add 200k products from 3rd party suppliers and brands, available only in Spain at first.

H&M announced its partnership with Shopee to launch the “H&M Thailand Official Store” on Shopee Mall, with the aim of making customers' shopping experience more convenient.

Disney+ announced the launch of a new test that will allow subscribers to shop exclusive merchandise from their brands directly from the detail pages of select movies, series, and shorts.

Google built package tracking into Gmail Inbox so that you don't have to open a “your item has shipped” email or click on a tracking link to find out the estimated delivery date –but it doesn't work with Amazon.

BigCommerce and Snapchat launched a new app together that enables U.S. merchants to integrate their store and sync their product catalogs.

Shopify shut down Exchange Marketplace, its platform for buying and selling Shopify stores, on Nov 1st.

The EU launched the Digital Markets Act, with a goal of requiring companies such as Apple and Google to offer alternatives to allow third-party app stores on its platforms and alternative payment systems.

WhatsApp launched Communities, a feature that offers larger and more structured discussion groups.

Shopify began unifying its fulfillment network with Deliverr, President Harley Finkelstein said on a Q3 earnings call, with the process expected to be completed in Q1.

USPS revealed that they are monitoring social media to measure custom satisfaction by zip code via a heatmap that geographically displays comments left on their Facebook and Twitter and review sites.

Tock launched its own e-commerce platform, Tock Wine Shop, which enables winery partners to sell directly to consumers while continuing to manage tasting reservations on its all-in-one platform.

Jumia, an African e-commerce Amazon-like marketplace, saw its co-founders Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec step down as co-CEOs. 

Amazon Prime Video launched a new mobile-only plan for users in India for Rs 89 ($1.09) a month billed annually.

FedEx owned ShopRunner launched an app designed to simplify online shopping by allowing users to discover new brands and connect with retailers through a single feed.

Splitit partnered with Checkout.com to offer their BNPL services through the platform.

Substack launched Substack Chat, a new feature that allows writers to communicate directly with their most avid and loyal readers within the mobile app.

Instagram announced plans to launch built-in NFT creation and trading tools using the Polygon blockchain for NFT minting and pull NFT metadata from OpenSea.

Mastodon, a free and open source decentralized social network that launched in 2016, gained more than 230k new sign-ups since Oct 27, the day Musk took over Twitter.

Stripe launched in Thailand, continuing its goal of expanding into the Asia Pacific region where it spotted demand for its payment tech. 

PayPal announced during an earnings call that 25M consumers are now using its BNPL option, equating to 150M loans over 2.2M unique merchants.

Amazon froze their recruitment plans for its corporate sectors, with an expected hiring freeze will last for a few months.

New Zealand proposed new BNPL regulation, such as requiring providers to carry out affordability checks for purchases above NZ$600 ($424), as the country has seen BNPL spending increase.

Drizly, the Uber owned on-demand alcohol delivery platform, announced a new brand direction of an e-commerce resource for any occasion with a focus on gift giving.

Shopify made a strategic move to attract more enterprise-level customers to its platform by teaming up with one of the world's largest professional service networks, Ernst & Young (EY).

TikTok enabled TikTok Shop in the U.S., allowing users to make purchases directly through the app, a feature that was previously only available in the U.K. and seven regions of Asia. 

Amazon’s ad business grew 58% in 2021 to more than $31B in revenue, making it the third-biggest online ad seller in the US, only trailing Google and Facebook.

The European Commission began working on laws to reduce packaging waste, including plans to cut down on empty space in e-commerce parcels and increase reusable packaging.

Amazon Robotics debuted an AI-powered robotic arm and delivery drone to make its logistics network more efficient.

Shopify outsourced dozens of its customer-support roles to the Philippines through TaskUs, after recently laying off 1,000 workers.

Peloton piloted their new Shop the Class feature on bikes, which presents a widget at the end of class that members can tap to shop the styles that the instructor was wearing in class.

As of October, more than 45,000 workers in the US tech sector were laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022.

Essilor International was fined €81M by the French l’Autorité de la Concurrence for unfairly discriminating against online retailers, resulting in higher prices for glasses and limited choice for consumers.

Twitter suspended its new $8 subscription program to combat users impersonating major brands.

Microsoft experimented with promoting its products in the sign-out flyout menu that shows up after clicking the user icon in the Windows 11 start menu.

Amazon Shipping officially arrived in India, quietly testing its transportation and logistic network to businesses and 3rd party merchants.

Amazon Music users were angry after the ability to select individual songs was removed unless they pay $9/month.

A Texas woman filed a class action lawsuit against Block Inc and Cash App, alleging that the companies were negligent and allowed a data breach that led to consumers personal information being leaked.

Apple and Amazon faced a class action antritust lawsuit in the U.S. for conspiring to drive up the prices of iPhones and iPads by removing nearly every other reseller from the Amazon marketplace.

Affirm's delinquency rates were 2.7%, up from 0.8% in 2021, however the company said that the demand for BNPL is increasing and that they are on track to achieve profitability in 2024.

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority warned BNPL bosses that they could face jail time if they do not follow the new financial promotion rules.

A leaked video revealed that Amazon may have a new healthcare offering coming soon called “Amazon Clinic”, which would offer treatment for common conditions like allergies and acne.

Shein began piloting a marketplace-style model similar to Taobao in Brazil, where merchants set up stores directly on the site and are responsible for their own operations and logistics.

Carousell Media launched a digital ad service called Shopping Ad, which will serve users ads via a targeted feed based on keyword-tracking queries on its marketplaces.

Gap officially launched its store on Amazon via a partnership with Amazon Fashion, marking the first time that the company itself has sold its products on the marketplace (outside of 3rd party sellers).

YouTube announced new features coming to YouTube Shorts, including affiliate marketing and the ability to purchase items through Shorts.

PayPal-owned Happy Returns debuted a returns-based revenue stream for Shopify merchants to help convert returns into additional shopping.

OnlyFans announced a partnership with the e-commerce platform Spring to enable creators to link their profiles to a web store to sell personalized merchandise.

Linktree addeda way for users to monetize the content through a Payment Lock feature, which allows creators to put a paywall in front of certain content like PDFs, messaging groups, or 1-on-1 consultations.

Fanfix, the Patreon-style platform focused on Gen Z, launched its own link-in-bio service called SuperLink, a standalone monetization-focused link-in-bio platform that displays a creator’s Fanfix page.

WhatsApp launched functionalities which enable Brazilian consumers to find, communicate, and transact with businesses, all within the app.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said that he feels that e-commerce and ads are “mutually reinforcing.”

Facebook removed a number of personal details from user profile bios starting December 1st including Interested in, religious and political views, and address fields.

Patchworks, an e-commerce integration provider, appointed Jim Herbert, who most recently served as SVP and General Manager EMEA at BigCommerce, as their new CEO.

Cart.com and FedEx announced a strategic alliance to offer an optimized omnichannel experience, enhanced fulfillment insights, frictionless returns management, and more delivery options. 

Pitney Bowes launched a shipping-label printer with a built-in scale and WiFi called The Pitney Ship Cube that lets sellers process orders from Amazon, eBay, Shopify and other platforms.

Saks Off 5th revamped its fulfilment options around delivery dates calculated as the customer buys.

Amazon launched a new Account Health Assurance program to protect sellers from having their accounts deactivated, as long as they work with Amazon to resolve any issues.

Shopify teamed up with Balance to offer B2B merchants a single-click payment option with a user experience that resembles shopping, ordering, and paying through a consumer e-commerce site.

Jitterbit announced that it will provide ERP integrations for Shopify Plus merchants to allow Shopify merchants to integrate their stores with all major ERP and EDI systems.

Nick Kokonas, founder of the reservations platform Tock that got acquired by Squarespace, left the company, replaced by Matthew Tucker, the former president and COO of online ordering provider Olo. 

clean.io launched Coupon Detective tool, a free suite of analytics that shows merchants the coupon usage on their site, the source, how often they are used, and how much revenue is being lost.

eBay announced that it will no longer restrict the accounts of sellers who list banned books on its marketplace, but will continue to remove listings of books that violate its Offensive Materials policy.

Australia began considering rules that would treat the BNPL industry the same way as loan products or credit cards.

Sticky.io, a subscription commerce platform, appointed Spencer Watts, former CFO and COO of WooCommerce, as its new CFO.

Foot Locker's new CEO, Mary Dillon, detailed her plans to simplify the business and improve e-commerce, which include building out omnichannel capabilities, improving the loyalty program, and optimizing costs.

Target introduced a new large-format store to better support the company's same-day omnichannel services like Order Pickup and Drive Up.

Temu continued to crush it with more than 5.2M installs in the U.S., which represents its biggest market by a landslide at 97% of its users. 

Amazon announced that it's shutting down three of its initiatives in India and one global project including Amazon Food, Amazon Academy, Amazon Distribution, and Wickr Me.

Walmart took the top spot this year among shoppers who were searching online for Black Friday discounts.

Etsy revealed that it is now big enough to take a more “vertical strategy” in 2023, which means, “treating certain types of products differently, as opposed to all having the same features, policies, and attention.”

The Indian government released a new framework to curb fake and misleading reviews on e-commerce platforms, travel services, restaurants, and consumer durables.

eBay sellers reported that local pickup was being offered as a delivery option in their listings even though they didn't turn on the setting.

Hestia Capital Partners LP, which owns a 6.9% stake in Pitney Bowes Inc, urged the company to re-evaluate its capital allocation and e-commerce strategy, suggesting a possible sale of the underperforming segment.

Research from the University of Florida revealed that many consumer products sold on Amazon have used deceptive marketing practices to raise prices while pretending to offer a discount.

Shopify was under heat for resisting calls to cut ties with Libs of TikTok, a controversial site accused of being anti-LGBTQ2 that sells merchandise plastered with allegations of grooming children.

Bold Commerce appointed Peter Karpas as their new CEO, having most recently served as SVP, Global Head of SMB Products at First Data (now Fiserv).

JD.com cut the salaries of more than 2,000 senior leaders by up to 20% in order to allocate $1.4B to help rank-and-file employees buy homes.

WooCommerce and Coinbase teamed up to allow merchants to accept crypto payments through Coinbase Commerce.

December 2022

Total online sales reached $281B globally for the holiday shopping weekend, a 2% increase YoY, and $68B in the U.S., a 9% increase YoY, according to Salesforce.

Amazon added a supply-chain management service to its web services division to offer companies tighter control of the flow of goods from factories to consumers.

BigCommerce announced an exclusive tech partner integration with StagingPro for merchants to easily test and deploy code to a BigCommerce store.

Klarna's Creator Platform, which initially launched in the U.S., expanded to the U.K. and the rest of the company's 45 regions.

YouTube published its annual list of the ads that performed best on its platform this year.

Stripe launched their new fiat-to-crypto widget which makes it easier to make purchases on a blockchain without signing up to an exchange.

Faire explored the idea of introducing ads to better monetize the sellers on its platform, which could include featured placement for products through search, related product suggestions, or display ads.

 Forbes released their 30 Under 30 in Retail & E-commerce, highlighting entrepreneurs who are reinventing how we shop, on and offline.

Block sued Bitcoin.com for using the trademarked word “Verse” for its native tokens, which raised $33.6M in a private sale earlier this year, and for not removing it despite repeated warnings.

Shopify confirmed that merchants will be able to switch to Google Analytics 4 by March 2023.

The CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons said their $24.6B proposed merger would help them defend against Amazon, even though Amazon commanded just 1.2% of grocery sales.

Macy's converted 1M square feet of its retail stores into fulfillment space as it gears up for holiday orders.

Amazon planned to invest $1B each year toward running its new Prime Video releases in movie theaters, hoping to release between 12 and 15 films annually.

Elon Musk claimed that Apple has “fully resumed” advertising on Twitter, which if true, was great for Twitter because Apple was their biggest advertiser.

Two former Amazon employees pleaded guilty to fraud and stealing $10M from the company by exploiting their positions to enter fake vendors into Amazon's vendor system and then submitting invoices.

Shein onboarded Jessica Liu, former co-president at Lazada, as its VP of global brand operations.

ChannelEngine, a Dutch marketplace integration platform serving over 8,100 brands selling on over 250 platforms, partnered with TikTok Shop to sync retailer's catalogs.

Batteries Plus brought in Aaron Bundschuh as chief digital officer to help oversee a transformation of its e-commerce experience.

Alibaba launched a new e-commerce platform called Miravia in Spain, in a move to grab a bigger share of the local mid-range to high-end consumer market in the country.

GoDaddy and ShipEngine partnered up to streamline shipping for merchants that operate GoDaddy online stores.

Flipkart partnered with Polygon, the Ethereum-based blockchain platform, to setup a center of excellence that will work on research and development of Web3 and metaverse commerce use-cases in India.

European parliamentarians reached an agreement on updated consumer credit rules to protect consumers from BNPL and other short-term high cost loans.

So many people contacted Shopify in regards to it hosting the Libs of TikTok store that the company had to issue specific guidance to customer-support reps about how to handle the topic.

Amazon debuted a new voice command that allows users to say, “Alexa, thank my driver”, which would tip the driver $5, covering the $5 tip for the first 1M thank yous given.

BigCommerce announced a new partnership with Sage to provide merchants with an end-to-end commerce solution, integrating their online storefronts to their back-office.

ONE announced plans to launch a BNPL service for customers to use online and in-stores, as well as with other retailers.

Amazon rolled out its Inspire feature publicly to select customers in the U.S. with plans to make it available to all U.S. shoppers in the coming months.

PMNTS revealed who's winning the battle of digital wallet market share with Apple Pay as the leader with 44% of major U.S. retailers accepting it.

WPP acquired Diff, a Montreal-based commerce agency that develops solutions for the Shopify ecosystem.

Amazon began working towards a world without barcodes, developing a multimodal identification (MMID) that processes information like appearance and dimension of an item from an image.

Shein announced plans to spend $15M on upgrades to its suppliers' factories, following a UK documentary report that found workers were subject to long hours and withheld wages.

Amazon.com experienced a several hour outage on Dec 7th for some customers and sellers.

Block was ordered by a federal magistrate judge to comply promptly with investigative demands made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of a two-year investigation into Cash App.

Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon shared in the Pentagon's $9B contract to build its cloud computing network.

USPS began advertising holiday shipping supplies on eBay that lead to a landing page on the USPS store promoting their free Priority Mail packaging supplies.

Amazon and AWS joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), the world's largest patent non-aggression consortium which works to protect Linux and Linux-related software from patent aggression.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission sued American Express for allegedly creating confusion for customers about whether they were applying for a credit card or loyalty card.

Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Linux, and TomTom teamed up to create a map solution called Overture Maps Foundation that they hope will rival Google Maps.

Walmart launched a new Text To Shop feature for iOS and Android phones that allows customers to text the retailer and shop via SMS with their Walmart account.

BigCommerce announced its plan to reduce its cost structure and accelerate its path to profitability. 

Shopify decided not to move into its 254,000 square-foot space at The Well, a newly built, mixed-use development in Toronto.

TikTok faced congressional efforts to shut down its operation in the U.S. over concerns about the app’s ties to ByteDance, its China-based parent company, and the Chinese government’s reputation for surveillance.

FedEx launched a consolidated returns program in the U.S. as a means of offering a low-priced easy e-commerce returns option for merchants and shoppers. 

Walmart's CEO Doug McMillon said in a televised interview with CNBC that inflation will persist into the new year, especially for food prices.

Amazon said that it produced 214M pounds of plastic waste last year, but the nonprofit group Oceana says it actually produced more than three times as much.

Facebook and Instagram's position as the advertising platform of choice for U.K eroded over the year, falling from 70.5% in January to 60.9% in November.

Job postings for Canadian tech roles dropped 32% since May, according to Indeed.

PayU, the Netherlands-based payment service provider, expanded its digital payments business in Central America, with plans to launch in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica.

Drupal, the open source CMS popular with enterprise developers, released Drupal 10.0, a version that integrates more than 4,000 incremental improvements.

Hostme, a provider of restaurant management software, launched a new integration with Wix to allow restaurant owners to integrate their automated restaurant reservation and waitlist management system.

Uber Eats partnered with Cartken, a U.S. robotics company, to provide sidewalk robots to deliver food.

Gilimex, a Vietnamese manufacturer of warehouse storage systems, sued Amazon for $280M, claiming that they abruptly scaled back orders after it boosted capacity.

Amazon made changes to its business practices to resolve two European antitrust investigations involving its use of nonpublic data from independent merchants who sell goods on its platform.

The Australian government planned new crypto regulations in 2023 as part of a broader move to modernize local financial and payments infrastructure.

Walmart's drone delivery service became available for customers at 22 stores in Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

Couger, a Tokyo-based AI startup, is launched a virtual human agent named Rachel to FamilyMart, with plans to deploy her across 5,000 stores by the end of 2023.

SoFi, the San Francisco-based fintech and online bank, is rolled out a new BNPL product, allowing members to split a purchase between $50 and $500 into four interest-free payments.

The House and Senate passed a $1.7 trillion funding package that contains legislation to force online marketplaces to verify high-volume sellers.

Amazon's product prices increased by 6% in 2022, below the average inflation range of 7% to 9% in the US, and next year Amazon said it expects its product prices to grow below 3% before turning negative in 2024.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act (WWPA), a new legislation that requires employers to inform warehouse distribution workers of their quotas and performance.

After DIRECTV made it clear that it had no intention of renewing its deal for the NFL Sunday Night Ticket package, YouTube won the bid, paying an average of $2B/year.

Analysts predicted four major challenges they expect Walmart to encounter in 2023 which include too much inventory, growing e-commerce while mitigating costs, and expanding healthcare and banking services.

U.S. federal regulators announced that Epic Games will pay $520M in penalties and refunds to settle complaints around children's privacy and payment methods that tricked players into making unintended purchases.

Disney Resort in Tokyo changed its user agreement for park visitors to prohibit them from buying products and souvenirs for the purpose of reselling them, which has become a major problem for visitors. 

Wix appointed Vargab Bakshi as VP and Country Head in India in a bid to capture a bigger market share in the country.

The Confederation of All India Traders demanded that the government immediately roll out a robust and strong e-commerce policy, formation of a regulatory authority for e-commerce and release of e-commerce rules under Consumer Protection Act.

Sezzle launched a partnership with the Independent College Bookstore Association (ICBA), a support group for college stores, to offer BNPL for buying textbooks, school supplies, and college gear.

Weis Markets, a mid-Alantic grocer that operates 197 brick-and-mortar stores, created an omni commerce shopping environment that unifies their commerce, loyalty, and promotions into one platform.

Amazon rolled out Prime Gaming, its subscription service that offers access to a number of gaming titles, to its members in India weeks after testing it in the South Asian market.

Goldman Sachs expanded its banking partnership with Apple, with rumors that customers will be able to view their account balances within their Apple digital wallet.

Amazon rolled out a trending searches feature, and “dog Christmas gifts” was a top trend in recent weeks.

The IRS delayed its new $600 tax reporting rule, which was supposed to go into effect this coming tax season.

Amazon tried to sell excess space on its fleet of about 100 cargo planes in the US and Europe.

Walmart Canada integrated Western Union into its website to offer customers money transfers.

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