Ecommerce helped retail out of a sticky spot during the pandemic, and those habits formed during lockdowns will endure, as digital demands more attention than ever—37.5% of all retail sales this year will be ecommerce sales.

During the pandemic-induced lockdowns in 2020, many UK-based shoppers confined to their homes saw little need to shop for apparel, and even now, as restrictions ease, apparel will still not be a consumer focus.

eBay rolls out lending to UK SMBs: The ecommerce giant is partnering with embedded finance platform YouLend to extend loans to its sellers—giving the former a chance to make itself stickier for platform sellers and the latter access to data and loan growth.

eBay seeks to plug small business financing gap with an embedded lending product for its UK SMB sellers. eBay and other ecommerce firms will likely add more financial services, like accounting solutions, to better serve their user bases.

This will be a tough year for holiday season retail in the UK. Shoppers will spend less in 2020, and much of their spend will fall outside the traditional November–December time frame, leading to the lowest holiday retail sales total since 2015.

Digital ad spending across several industries in the UK has been up-and-down the past two years. There will be across-the-board growth this year, but at uneven rates, ranging from 33.0% for travel to 7.8% for automotive.

The UK neobank is the latest to join the hot and crowded installment-payments space—and cross-promotion to its 5 million users could ramp it up quickly.

The UK-based neobank is looking to do buy now, pay later (BNPL) trials in Europe next year—and it could quickly find a following within its large customer base.

The UK neobank giant is rolling out stock trading in the US in hopes of capturing the retail trading boom, but existing digital brokers have already scooped up the lion’s share.