Digital commerce platforms help merchants of all sizes sell online, making them an increasingly big factor in ecommerce payments. This creates new opportunities for processors, gateways, and other payments stakeholders to reach merchants—but also complicates their relationship.

The explosion in vertical video is creating both opportunities and challenges for the Story format. Stories are evolving quickly on Instagram and remain a top venue for influencer activations. But Twitter’s decision to kill off Fleets shows they aren’t popular on all platforms.

As technology continues to accelerate and transform the financial sector, Visa saw an opportunity to reintroduce itself to the world with a campaign highlighting its role in facilitating global commerce. Watch Industry Voices: Spotlight on Financial Services with Visa executive Frederique Covington Corbett, PhD, to hear her thoughts on cryptocurrencies, "buy now, pay later," economic inclusion, and more.

Singles’ Day, the online shopping festival invented by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and held on November 11, is widely known in the West. Now, a series of similar “double-digit” shopping festivals from digital powerhouses Lazada and Shopee are driving ecommerce growth in Southeast Asia.

Social media usage, advertising, and commerce will reach new levels in 2021, presenting big opportunities for brands to engage consumers.

Social commerce accelerated in the US in 2020 amid the pandemic-driven ecommerce boom as key platforms advanced their shopping and checkout capabilities.

Livestreaming was an existing trend that gained newfound relevance during the pandemic. Over the past few months, nearly all of the major US social networks have expanded their services and introduced new livestreaming opportunities, many of which are aimed at boosting commerce on the platforms.

The pandemic accelerated payments industry digitization across the entire landscape, as merchants turned to ecommerce to keep doors open, consumers eschewed cash in favor of electronic and contactless payments, and payments technology providers rapidly developed and launched new solutions to keep up.

Sellers have more freedom to customize their online stores with new design and payment tools, which can help Shopify maintain its seller base after the pandemic subsides and ecommerce growth normalizes.

The retail industry is transforming at both physical stores and in digital. This report examines 10 trends that will most shape retail in the year ahead.

Lydia teamed up with Cashbee to offer savings accounts next to its payments platform and retail banking services as it bets on cross-selling opportunities.

The types of expenses included under the 'IT/tech' umbrella are core systems maintenance, modernization, innovation, transformative technology, data processing, equipment, software, digital initiatives, compliance, and cybersecurity spending, while salaries are excluded.

Digital billing platform snapped up rival OODA Health for $450M—tech like this could not only help patients improve financial literacy, but also help hospitals better comply with CMS’ price transparency mandates.

On today's episode, we discuss whether augmented reality is the future of marketing, how Clubhouse launching on Android can help the social audio platform grow its user base, how much the pandemic changed boomers' online behavior, whether "buy now, pay later" can move beyond retail, how to help people find something to watch on Netflix, how to swim up in the sky, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer analysts Nina Goetzen and Daniel Keyes, and principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Jeremy Goldman.

Commerce Updates. Here are the key commerce updates for Facebook in Q1 2021:. Facebook Shops Expansion. In February, Facebook expanded its online storefront feature, Facebook Shops, to businesses in the UK and Canada. Facebook Shops was first launched in the US in May 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic is strengthening e-commerce in India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria, which already had factors like sizable populations, fast e-commerce growth rates, and a large number of digital buyers working in their favor — but the growth of online shopping also faces distinct obstacles in each country. Three Key Questions This Report Will Answer:.

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of mobile payment platforms (used at point-of-sale), as Americans sought out retailers offering contactless services. As a result, user and transaction value growth have accelerated.

And over the course of 2020, it’s become increasingly clear that the company is taking another approach to extract revenues from the chat app: shopping, payments, and customer service. In Q4, WhatsApp launched a series of new features and services geared at facilitating transactions between businesses and consumers on the platform.