1. STAT OF THE WEEK: E-commerce passed the $1 trillion mark in a single year for the first time ever. -- According to Comscore.
2. The price of a Shopify subscription is going up, effective immediately for new subscribers and in three months for existing merchants.--Basic is going from $19 to $25 per month. (+31.5%)--Shopify is going from $49 to $65 per month (+32.6%)--Advanced is going from $299 to $399 per month (+33.4%)Also keep in mind that as of October, Shopify Taxes now costs 0.35% transaction fee (0.25% for Plus merchants) on sales above $100k each year.
3. Last week Walmart launched a dedicated e-commerce site called Walmart Business that is tailored to small and medium business customers. The website offers a curated assortment of more than 100k items such as office supplies, furniture, snacks, food and beverages, restroom supplies, electronics, and facility needs. To shop on the new marketplace, businesses can create a free Walmart Business account or pay $98/year for a Walmart Business+ membership which includes perks like free / no minimum shipping, 2% rewards, 5% saving on certain items, and more. The benefits are similar to Amazon Business.
4. Last week Amazon announced RxPass, a new $5/month add-on for Prime members that will give them access to prescription generic drugs for more than 80 health conditions, ranging from high blood pressure to anxiety. The flat fee covers all the patient's medications (ie: it's not $5 per month per medication). So a patient who takes prescription drugs for high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and anxiety would just pay $5 per month versus the $30 or more they might pay currently.
5. Amazon and Stripe announced an expanded partnership last week. Amazon will broaden its use of Stripe's payment processing platform significantly, and in turn, Stripe will expand its use of Amazon Web Services.
6. Google is updating four of its services to address concerns raised by consumer protection regulators in the EU, including Play Store, Google Store, Google Hotels, and Google Flights. The changes focus mainly on e-commerce purchases, with a goal of making it easier for consumers to access information about handsets and other items they buy through Google services.
7. Insider Monkey used stock screeners and manual research to identify the biggest e-commerce companies in the world based on market cap. For private companies, they used a revenue multiple of 2x to come up with the estimated market value. The list includes (in billions of $):--Amazon: $949.91--Walmart: $392.45--Alibaba: $303.22--Meituan: $128.75--Pinduoduo: $118.08--JD.com: $107.48--MercadoLibre: $46.47--Shopify: $45.93--Otto GmbH: $33.92--Sea Limited: $31.67--Shein: $31.4--Coupang: $30.56--Copart: $29.49--eBay: $25.23--DoorDash: $19.85--Chewy: $18.39--Etsy: $16.82
8. An Amazon engineer made headlines for asking ChatGPT interview questions for a software coding job at the company, and the chatbot got them right! The answers were reportedly not the most efficient and had some buggy implementation, however, ChatGPT was able to give correct solutions and even improve the code. Other Amazon employees were apparently using ChatGPT for research purposes and to solve daily problems like writing software code and creating training documents. An Amazon lawyer chimed in on Slack where the conversations were taking place, warning employees not to share confidential information with ChatGPT.
9. PayPal and Bold Commerce are bringing payments and checkout together into a single, pre-integrated solution. The two providers have launched a new integration that will let brands and retailers use Bold Commerce's checkout suite to accept payments with PayPal, Venmo, PayPal's BNPL tools, and credit and debit cards through their platform.
10. Amazon Fresh orders below $150 will have a delivery fee between $3.95 and $9.95, starting Feb. 28. Previously, Prime members received free delivery on any orders over $35 or $50, depending on their location.
11. Meanwhile on the other side of the ocean, Meesho, the India marketplace for fashion and consumer goods, is tightening up its return policy following feedback from its third-party logistics partners. The platform historically has compensated its sellers for products returned by customers, but the misuse of its lenient policy prompted a change.
12. One of the predictions in our 2023 E-commerce Predictions report was from Emily Pfeiffer, Principal Analyst at Forrester, who said, “Businesses will slash promises to consumers to protect their bottom line. This focus will manifest as more limited delivery options, tighter policies for returns and guarantees, and most importantly, investment in optimization technology like order management systems.” — Is it happening already??
13. In other Amazon Fresh news, the North London store is closing its doors less than two years after opening. This was one of Amazon Fresh's prototype stores for its Just Walk Out technology.
14. Bolt, the one-click checkout provider, laid off about 10% of its employees on Tuesday, or around 50 people. Once valued at $11B, the company has cut more than half of its headcount since May.
15. The total cost of e-commerce fraud in 2023 will reach $206.8B, according to the new State of Fraud 2023 report from Signifyd. The company's analysis also suggests that consumer abuse is becoming a bigger problem than payment fraud for e-commerce retailers, growing 36% during 2022.
16. CedCommerce announced the launch of Social Ads for Buy with Prime, which helps merchants drive traffic to their e-commerce website by creating Buy with Prime badged Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. With the announcement, the company became the first partner listed on Amazon’s Buy with Prime Marketing Solutions and Marketplace.
17. Amazon will sell its vacant office in the Bay Area, just 16 months after purchasing it as part of the company's expansion during the pandemic and strategy to acquire real estate properties in big cities for future growth. Amazon paid $123M for the 29-acre property in Oct 2021 and will likely sell it at a loss to Dermody Properties LLC who will convert it into warehouse space.
18. Mollie, a Swedish payments provider, named Koen Köppen, a former Klarna executive, as its CEO. He will replace Shane Happach, who is leaving the company to take up a leadership role in Asia.
19. Despite massive layoffs in recent months, tech jobs are still in high demand in the US, according to Indeed. Eight of the top 10 best jobs in the US are tech roles including full stack developers, data engineers, cloud engineers, senior product managers, back-end developers, site reliability engineers, machine learning engineers, and product designers. Several tech industry observers including John Cook, co-founder of GeekWire, and Vice reporter Maxwell Strachan believe that the recent layoffs aren't out of necessity, but done to put tech engineers in their place by making them fear for their jobs.
20. Speaking of layoffs, less than two years after HBC split e-commerce from its brick-and-mortar operations of Saks and The Bay, the companies are laying off up to 3.5% of their workforce. As tech companies scramble to contain their costs and lay off thousands, HBC’s rationale for the split doesn’t seem to be holding up.
21. YOTTAA published its fifth annual “2023 eCommerce Technology Index” to hep retailers research new technologies for their sites and understand the impact third parties can have on overall site performance. The report examines the site performance impact of 619 of the most widely adopted e-commerce third parties, with data collected over the course of December 2022, representing 5.5 billion page views from the nearly 2,000 e-commerce sites.
22. A new “creditor matrix” published by FTX's lawyers revealed that Google, Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Apple, Netflix, LinkedIn, Amazon and Microsoft are all owed money by the crypto exchange after its recent collapse. It’s unclear how much money is allegedly owed to the tech companies, and it's possible that some or all of these companies are owed ad fees, as the exchange had accounts and cloud hosting with the platforms.
23. 62% of e-commerce companies believe that real-time data will be a primary focus in 2023. Real time scraping is an essential function for e-commerce advertising, and it will become increasingly important for companies to track information on their competitors' websites.
24. Plus 11 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including PayEm's $20M Series A.

1. STAT OF THE WEEK: E-commerce passed the $1 trillion mark in a single year for the first time ever. -- According to Comscore.
2. The price of a Shopify subscription is going up, effective immediately for new subscribers and in three months for existing merchants.--Basic is going from $19 to $25 per month. (+31.5%)--Shopify is going from $49 to $65 per month (+32.6%)--Advanced is going from $299 to $399 per month (+33.4%)Also keep in mind that as of October, Shopify Taxes now costs 0.35% transaction fee (0.25% for Plus merchants) on sales above $100k each year.
3. Last week Walmart launched a dedicated e-commerce site called Walmart Business that is tailored to small and medium business customers. The website offers a curated assortment of more than 100k items such as office supplies, furniture, snacks, food and beverages, restroom supplies, electronics, and facility needs. To shop on the new marketplace, businesses can create a free Walmart Business account or pay $98/year for a Walmart Business+ membership which includes perks like free / no minimum shipping, 2% rewards, 5% saving on certain items, and more. The benefits are similar to Amazon Business.
4. Last week Amazon announced RxPass, a new $5/month add-on for Prime members that will give them access to prescription generic drugs for more than 80 health conditions, ranging from high blood pressure to anxiety. The flat fee covers all the patient's medications (ie: it's not $5 per month per medication). So a patient who takes prescription drugs for high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and anxiety would just pay $5 per month versus the $30 or more they might pay currently.
5. Amazon and Stripe announced an expanded partnership last week. Amazon will broaden its use of Stripe's payment processing platform significantly, and in turn, Stripe will expand its use of Amazon Web Services.
6. Google is updating four of its services to address concerns raised by consumer protection regulators in the EU, including Play Store, Google Store, Google Hotels, and Google Flights. The changes focus mainly on e-commerce purchases, with a goal of making it easier for consumers to access information about handsets and other items they buy through Google services.
7. Insider Monkey used stock screeners and manual research to identify the biggest e-commerce companies in the world based on market cap. For private companies, they used a revenue multiple of 2x to come up with the estimated market value. The list includes (in billions of $):--Amazon: $949.91--Walmart: $392.45--Alibaba: $303.22--Meituan: $128.75--Pinduoduo: $118.08--JD.com: $107.48--MercadoLibre: $46.47--Shopify: $45.93--Otto GmbH: $33.92--Sea Limited: $31.67--Shein: $31.4--Coupang: $30.56--Copart: $29.49--eBay: $25.23--DoorDash: $19.85--Chewy: $18.39--Etsy: $16.82
8. An Amazon engineer made headlines for asking ChatGPT interview questions for a software coding job at the company, and the chatbot got them right! The answers were reportedly not the most efficient and had some buggy implementation, however, ChatGPT was able to give correct solutions and even improve the code. Other Amazon employees were apparently using ChatGPT for research purposes and to solve daily problems like writing software code and creating training documents. An Amazon lawyer chimed in on Slack where the conversations were taking place, warning employees not to share confidential information with ChatGPT.
9. PayPal and Bold Commerce are bringing payments and checkout together into a single, pre-integrated solution. The two providers have launched a new integration that will let brands and retailers use Bold Commerce's checkout suite to accept payments with PayPal, Venmo, PayPal's BNPL tools, and credit and debit cards through their platform.
10. Amazon Fresh orders below $150 will have a delivery fee between $3.95 and $9.95, starting Feb. 28. Previously, Prime members received free delivery on any orders over $35 or $50, depending on their location.
11. Meanwhile on the other side of the ocean, Meesho, the India marketplace for fashion and consumer goods, is tightening up its return policy following feedback from its third-party logistics partners. The platform historically has compensated its sellers for products returned by customers, but the misuse of its lenient policy prompted a change.
12. One of the predictions in our 2023 E-commerce Predictions report was from Emily Pfeiffer, Principal Analyst at Forrester, who said, “Businesses will slash promises to consumers to protect their bottom line. This focus will manifest as more limited delivery options, tighter policies for returns and guarantees, and most importantly, investment in optimization technology like order management systems.” — Is it happening already??
13. In other Amazon Fresh news, the North London store is closing its doors less than two years after opening. This was one of Amazon Fresh's prototype stores for its Just Walk Out technology.
14. Bolt, the one-click checkout provider, laid off about 10% of its employees on Tuesday, or around 50 people. Once valued at $11B, the company has cut more than half of its headcount since May.
15. The total cost of e-commerce fraud in 2023 will reach $206.8B, according to the new State of Fraud 2023 report from Signifyd. The company's analysis also suggests that consumer abuse is becoming a bigger problem than payment fraud for e-commerce retailers, growing 36% during 2022.
16. CedCommerce announced the launch of Social Ads for Buy with Prime, which helps merchants drive traffic to their e-commerce website by creating Buy with Prime badged Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. With the announcement, the company became the first partner listed on Amazon’s Buy with Prime Marketing Solutions and Marketplace.
17. Amazon will sell its vacant office in the Bay Area, just 16 months after purchasing it as part of the company's expansion during the pandemic and strategy to acquire real estate properties in big cities for future growth. Amazon paid $123M for the 29-acre property in Oct 2021 and will likely sell it at a loss to Dermody Properties LLC who will convert it into warehouse space.
18. Mollie, a Swedish payments provider, named Koen Köppen, a former Klarna executive, as its CEO. He will replace Shane Happach, who is leaving the company to take up a leadership role in Asia.
19. Despite massive layoffs in recent months, tech jobs are still in high demand in the US, according to Indeed. Eight of the top 10 best jobs in the US are tech roles including full stack developers, data engineers, cloud engineers, senior product managers, back-end developers, site reliability engineers, machine learning engineers, and product designers. Several tech industry observers including John Cook, co-founder of GeekWire, and Vice reporter Maxwell Strachan believe that the recent layoffs aren't out of necessity, but done to put tech engineers in their place by making them fear for their jobs.
20. Speaking of layoffs, less than two years after HBC split e-commerce from its brick-and-mortar operations of Saks and The Bay, the companies are laying off up to 3.5% of their workforce. As tech companies scramble to contain their costs and lay off thousands, HBC’s rationale for the split doesn’t seem to be holding up.
21. YOTTAA published its fifth annual “2023 eCommerce Technology Index” to hep retailers research new technologies for their sites and understand the impact third parties can have on overall site performance. The report examines the site performance impact of 619 of the most widely adopted e-commerce third parties, with data collected over the course of December 2022, representing 5.5 billion page views from the nearly 2,000 e-commerce sites.
22. A new “creditor matrix” published by FTX's lawyers revealed that Google, Meta, TikTok, Twitter, Apple, Netflix, LinkedIn, Amazon and Microsoft are all owed money by the crypto exchange after its recent collapse. It’s unclear how much money is allegedly owed to the tech companies, and it's possible that some or all of these companies are owed ad fees, as the exchange had accounts and cloud hosting with the platforms.
23. 62% of e-commerce companies believe that real-time data will be a primary focus in 2023. Real time scraping is an essential function for e-commerce advertising, and it will become increasingly important for companies to track information on their competitors' websites.
24. Plus 11 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including PayEm's $20M Series A.

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