India cracks down on ecommerce giants: The country proposed regulations that would ban ecommerce sites from hosting flash sales or listing affiliated entities as sellers on their platforms, which could spell trouble for players like Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart.

India’s painful and ongoing struggle with the coronavirus pandemic will lead to a second consecutive difficult year for brick-and-mortar retail sales. At the same time, the public health anxieties constraining overall retail will continue pushing consumers toward digital solutions. We anticipate an extended boom for ecommerce in India, including 27.0% growth this year, for $66.76 billion in sales.

China could be ready to launch the digital yuan in early 2022, and India is building a CBDC framework while also warming up to Bitcoin.

It’s Prime Day in June. Amazon traditionally held Prime Day in mid-July but pushed the event to October last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. (The exception was India, where it took place in August 2020.) This year, Amazon will hold Prime Day on June 21–22.

Top 10 countries for ecommerce growth

The Indian ecommerce market is rapidly growing: In the last year, online shopping has experienced a swift uptake in India, driven in part by COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions. A March 2021 survey found that nearly half of consumers in India preferred online shopping to in-person shopping in the prior 12 months.

China’s wallets have gone mobile

As brick-and-mortar stores remained shuttered, ecommerce quickly became the channel of choice for many consumers in Latin America. In turn, retailers quickly shifted their attention toward online sales channels to keep pace with consumers’ growing appetite for online shopping.

It might also open the way for new wallet users, which could aid India’s growing mobile payment users: The number of proximity mobile payment users is expected to grow 15.6% annually to reach 145.5 million in India this year, per Insider Intelligence forecasts.

Top 10 countries for real-time payments