The coronavirus pandemic has been disastrous for the vast majority of Europe’s retailers. Digital retail has benefitted, though. In Germany, we expect retail ecommerce sales to rise 16.2% this year, and total $92.33 billion.

Germany, a relatively resilient economy, was the only one of the five major markets to see even a modest rise in overall retail sales in 2020, at 1.0%. At the same time, ecommerce grew by 21.9%, to €86.50 billion ($96.86 billion). France saw ecommerce sales climb to €65.91 billion ($73.80 billion). Overall, ecommerce claimed an estimated 14.2% of retail sales in these five countries.

The policy introduced data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook to allow businesses to use shared resources across the two platforms to enable ecommerce and payment transactions. Users interpreted the data sharing to mean that Facebook could now read or listen to their messages and calls.