Shopify works with ecommerce giant JD.com to help its merchants sell in China: The deal marks a major push into China for Shopify and broadens JD.com’s international reach.

Key developments to watch in 2022 include the evolution of in-store retail technology; hotter competition in the paid-for video marketplace; the revival of digital out-of-home ads; and ongoing issues with digital privacy and security.

Our annual lookahead for Canada highlights some growth areas for brand marketers as well as the mediascape that’s evolving to serve them.

It’s not alone in the race. An influx of new BaaS entrants indicates the emergence of an industry to underpin embedded banking.

Shopify’s cross-border features show it’s shifting away from smaller sellers: The platform rose to popularity in part due to supporting mom-and-pops, but its newest international-focused features show it’s going all in on its biggest clients.

TikTok’s new marketing tools focus on customization and commerce: It’s taking steps to make advertisers feel comfortable on the platform and heavily push social commerce.

Take a look at some of Insider Intelligence's latest retail stories.

Shopify lets merchants go worldwide: A new global commerce hub and a recent investment in marketing tools hint at Shopify’s future.

TikTok’s Shopping tab marks a big but necessary shift: The feature will let select Shopify merchants add product catalogs to their profiles, likely the first of many interface changes to facilitate ecommerce on the TikTok.

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.