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.

A massive leap forward for Canada’s retail ecommerce market resulted from the pandemic. The momentum continues this year.

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.

Payments service providers are building an array of financial services to compete with financial institutions (FIs). Lending, bank account products, issuing, and other services that have been FIs’ bread and butter are being challenged in a bid to add more revenue opportunities and engender greater loyalty. These payment disruptors, such as Square, Stripe, and Shopify, are using their existing relationships with small businesses to attract clients away from FIs and persuading them to use their own financial offerings.

Even as the U.S. starts to open up again, consumers are still shopping online, and Shopify, a leading commerce platform that lets merchants manage their online retail operations in-house, is well positioned to capture the growing online market as it continues to strike new partnerships.

Service providers are using their existing relationships with small businesses to move into financial services, taking on financial institutions by offering solutions like lending and bank accounts that are powered by partnerships, digital banking developments, and even in-house banks.

Google dives deeper into ecommerce with Shopify: The two companies have worked out an integration that will give Shopify's merchants easy access to Google's suite of features, contributing to its over 1 billion daily shopping journeys.

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.

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

eMarketer senior analyst Jasmine Enberg and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Nazmul Islam discuss Twitter's stellar Q4 performance and how it managed to close out a terrible 2020 on a high note. They then talk about Snapchat redefining what friendship should mean, TikTok's fate in the Biden administration, and how much Shopify's "Shop Pay" could help boost Facebook and Instagram Shops.

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

Consumers’ growing willingness to get their financial services from non-FI providers is spurring consumer brands to embed financial elements in their products and services. But this new form of finance will mean dramatic changes for incumbent and startup FIs.

Buy now, pay later solutions are quickly gaining adoption as consumers look for new financing options and merchants aim to drive sales. But the industry is still unsettled as a number of firms are battling to lead the space, while card networks and issuers are looking to get involved too.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson and junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discuss how Twitter's Q3 earnings should be evaluated. They then talk about whether social audio will be the next big thing, TikTok's new partnership with Shopify, and if 2020 has been the year of live shopping.

The US computing products & consumer electronics industry will be the fastest growing digital ad spender in 2020, increasing its spend by 18.0% in a year when the total US digital ad market will only grow by 1.7%.

eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman discusses Amazon Prime competitor Walmart+, and Amazon's first cashierless supermarket. He also talks about why Shopify joined Facebook's cryptocurrency efforts, and Etsy's automatic advertising idea.

While our 2019 prediction of digital’s influence on the reinvention of brick-and-mortar has materialized, it may have also undersold Amazon’s omnipresence in the space. The 800-pound gorilla of retail will continue to cast a wide shadow.

In this year’s Key Digital Trends report, we identify what changes are coming to the digital media and technology landscape in 2020 and why they matter to marketers.