WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent initially released in January 2011. With this social networking application turning 10, WeChat continues to advance its shopping ambitions. The Chinese messenger facilitated 1.6 trillion yuan (close to $250 billion) in annual transactions through its “mini programs,” third-party services that run on the super app that allow users to buy clothes, order food, hail taxis, and more.
It all started from the year 2017 when WeChat introduced mini-programs in a move that was seen as a challenge to Apple’s App Store and has over time shaped the messenger into an online infrastructure that keeps people’s lives running. It hasn’t recently disclosed how many third-party lite apps it houses, but by 2018 the number reached one million, half the size of the App Store at the time.
It was in the year 2019 that the WeChat initiative of mini-programs got double the value of its transactions which the networking giant announced at its annual conference for business partners and ecosystem developers, normally taking place in its home city of Guangzhou in southern China However, it was moved online this year due to the pandemic.
The growth in mini-programs-based transactions has been taken in a positive strategic perspective which further helps the company’s goal to strengthen its fintech business, which counts digital payments as a major revenue driver.
“A big proportion of WeChat’s mini-programs are games, which the app said exceeded 500 million monthly users thanks to a boost in female and middle-aged users, as well as players residing in China’s Tier 3 cities,” says WeChat
WeChat said 240 million people have used its “payments score.” When the feature debuted back in 2019, there was speculation that it signaled WeChat’s entry into consumer credit finance and participation in the government’s social credit system. WeChat reiterated at this year’s event that the WeChat score does neither of that.
The networking application is also working at another feature that is similar to Snap’s stories. However, Allen Zhang was not allowed to talk much about it since his PR team didn’t allow it and also that they wanted to achieve a goal for themselves.
Zhang also announced the WeChat team is weighing up an input tool for users. It’d be a tiny project given Tencent’s colossal size, but the project reflects Zhang’s belief in “privacy protection,” despite public skepticism about how WeChat handles user data.
“If we analyze [users’ chat history], we can bring great advertising revenue to the company. But we don’t do that, so WeChat cares a lot about user privacy,” asserted Allen Zhang, WeChat’s creator.
Co-founders of Brightly on their mission to build a billion-dollar conscious consumer platform, reeled in $1 million to fuel its momentum.
Both the founders were able to turn a simple podcast about sustainable living into a full-blown platform for content, community, and online shopping. Laura co-founded Brightly after leading social impact search initiatives for Google, scaling Amazon.com’s Fashion business, igniting Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community, creating products for Adobe, and more, Laura was driven to create Brightly to catalyze change. She is a technical and design-focused leader with experience managing teams of all sizes and disciplines, from engineers to marketers. Along with Liza, Laura co-hosts the Good Together Podcast, an arm of the Brightly. eco platform.
This Seattle based start-up launched their Good Together podcast in 2019, partly as a way to see if their branding and voice around eco-conscious product recommendations and general life tips would resonate with “conscious customers” — and it did, quickly rising up the podcast charts. Not to mention but the podcast also caught the attention of Snapchat, which accepted Wittig and Moiseeva into its Yellow Accelerator program this past February.
Brightly after gaining some shape by building off the podcast, created more content geared toward sustainable living. The company figured out a way to earn revenue by joining hands into partnerships with brands and featuring their products. Brightly also participated in the Seattle-based Female Founders Alliance accelerator, which opened up conversations with investors.
Nevertheless, the community grew rapidly last year, with millions of new followers across TikTok and Instagram channels. The company now reaches more than 250,000 women daily and has an ambassador program of more than 10,000 members who share ideas and recommendations on Brightly’s apps.
Wittig highlighted the fact that the pandemic has made people think more deeply about what they buy and who they buy from, whether it’s the local restaurant down the street or an eco-friendly product manufacturer.
“It’s a combination of community and content to drive commerce,” Wittig said. “This is the future of how companies are going to be built. Rather than chasing customers to come in your door, you can establish relationships before you even ask them to pull out their wallet.”
“It’s truly allowing people to see the story behind products and forming an emotional relationship with the product,” she added.
Investors in the round include Tacoma Venture Fund; Keeler Investments; and the Female Founders Alliance. Odile Roujol, the former Lancôme CEO, also invested through her firm FAB Ventures.
“I founded FAB Ventures to back purpose-driven entrepreneurs,” Roujol said in a statement. “I’m excited to put this capital to work backing Brightly’s female founders, building a vibrant community of GenZ and Millennials, and scaling conscious consumerism. We can all make a difference.”
Brightly distinguishes itself from other marketplaces or e-commerce giants such as Amazon with its curation and vetting process.
Team eCommerce Next interviewed Mr. Omri Katz, CEO at Dialogue to get more insights on eCommerce stores and the role of AI to boost engagement and conversions. Following is our interview with him:
1. Tell Us How and Why You Started Dialogue. What Problem Are You Solving?
I started Dialogue because I identified a huge gap in the market in terms of eCommerce personalization and customer experience. Unlike the physical world in which you have clerks and physical customer assistance at the store, to truly take the online shopping experience to the next level, online stores need to adapt and invest more into enhancing their customer journey and overall interaction.
Consider eBay and Amazon for instance, they developed an extremely robust in-house technology that allows stores to optimize the customer experience and overall engagement. This technology is not accessible to the average to mid-sized eCommerce stores, because you need a complete team to operate and manage it and funds to build or deploy it. But often enough, such technology can really make the difference in their bottom line.
What’s exactly what Dialogue solves. We have developed a technology that works in an automated way which personalizes and improves the customer journey across all touchpoints in online stores. We’ve made it affordable so that small to mid-sized businesses can leverage it.
2. How Can AI Boost Conversions and Engagement for eCommerce stores?
We’re able to leverage advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze user’s actions in real time and understand hidden patterns to accurately predict their intent and preferences. Dialogue utilizes a lot of data and website interactions in real-time which yield conclusions that are immediately translated into personalized messages, product recommendations and more.
This leads to more successful and relevant customer journey and overall experience at the store, which often lead to higher engagement, completed check outs and reduction of bounce rates.
3. Generating Selling Text Is Pretty Impressive. How Does Your Platform Achieve That?
We use machine learning and natural language processing to analyze users patterns based on their actions. Then we are able to adjust the message to each customer in an automated way to resonate with the customers’ intent.
4. What’s Dialogue’s Edge Against Competitors?
While other personalization platforms do exist, they mostly require a hands-on staff to operate, A/B testing and continuously optimize and on top of that they are also very expensive. Dialogue works fully automatic and does not require any interaction from the merchant side, and is affordable by comparison. Our Machine Learning algorithm keeps improving and perfecting the results, eliminating from the algorithm less successfully customer journeys and interaction while focusing on ones that succeeded, and tries to enhance them further.
5. What Kind of Typical Results Does Dialogue Show?
Dialogue typically boosts several different parameters in a notable way. starting with Conversion Optimization, due to on-point recommendations, Dialogue has shown up to 35% uplift in conversion. Other metrics like session time has improved by up to 56%, ARPU (average revenue per user) by up to 28% and notable reduction in overall bounce rate with corresponding increase in overall engagement.
Here are two recent studies we have more well-known merchants:
6. How Long Does It Taking for Dialogue To Work and The Results to Come?
Our integration could take anywhere from a few hours to day depending on the CMS and website size, amount of SKUs and etc. But typically it is very fast and initial results can come in a matter of days. Our algorithm needs time to improve the results and map out more journeys for even enhanced performance.
7. How Does Your Pricing Structure Work?
Our pricing depends on three different factors. One, the overall size of the eCommerce store and monthly sessions. Two, number of Dialogue’s products and features the merchant wants to deploy and finally, amount of various items (SKUs).
About Omri Katz
Omri is an internet entrepreneur with over 9+ years experience in product and business development roles in the tech eco-system. Founded 3 startups. Bachelor of Law from IDC and bachelor of Business from IDC.
About Dialogue
Dialogue is an eCommerce personalization platform that helps online stores.
Amazon said that it offers its colossal operation network and advanced technologies in assisting President Joe Biden in its vow to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations to Americans in his first 100 days in office. A letter was sent addressed to the President from Amazon CEO of Worldwide consumer Dave Clark stating the help it offers. The company mentions that is ready to offer operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist the cause since Amazon’s size will allow the meaningful impact to be made in no time in this fight against COVID-19.
“As you begin your work leading the country out of the Covid-19 crisis, Amazon stands ready to assist you in reaching your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration,” Clark wrote in the letter, which was dated Wednesday (Jan. 20). Clark also said in the letter that the company has a deal with an occupational health care provider to give vaccines at its facilities.
This step by the company is taken after it comes out in the news that Starbucks will help Washington state with the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine. Starbucks has assigned duties to 11 staffers with knowledge in labor and deployment, operations and research and development to full-time distribute the vaccine there. Those individuals have who are assigned to work on distributing the vaccine will harness the coffee company’s digital simulation technology to expedite vaccinations. The aim of the collaboration is to make a formidable vaccine distribution network across the state’s almost 40 counties and 30 tribal nations.
As far as Amazon is concerned to carry out this function, it has already arranged a licensed third-party occupational health care provider to give vaccines on-site at its facilities for its employees when they become available. The company has more than 800,000 employees in the United States, Clark wrote, most of whom essential workers who cannot work from home and should be vaccinated as soon as possible.
Biden will sign 10 pandemic-related executive orders on Thursday, his second day in office, but the administration says efforts to supercharge the rollout of vaccines have been hindered by lack of cooperation from the Trump administration during the transition. They say they don’t have a complete understanding of the previous administrations’ actions on vaccine distribution. Biden is also depending on Congress to provide $1.9 trillion for economic relief and COVID-19 response. There is a litany of complaints from states that say they are not getting enough vaccine even as they are being asked to vaccinate a broader swath of Americans.
FedEx Express U.S. package services and FedEx Ground services, the surcharge for residential shipments is $3.50 per package. However, if you opt for the FedEx Home Delivery service, the surcharge is $3.00 per package. Hence, the company is planning to slap a new surcharge on its largest customers considering higher pandemic-related costs and indicating that robust demand continues to give couriers considerable power to dictate prices.
A residential delivery charge applies to shipments addressed to a home or private residence. An extra fee of 3 cents per residential package is to be charged from February 15, for customers who have a weekly average volume of more than 30,000 packages in the month of January. The levy comes about a month after FedEx announced other surcharges that take effect Monday.
“The impact of the virus continues to generate elevated volumes, and we continue to experience high demand for capacity,” the Memphis, Tennessee-based courier said Friday on its website. The charge will allow FedEx “to continue providing our customers with the best possible service.”
Both FedEx, as well as chief rival United Parcel Service Inc., have raised prices aggressively post-pandemic because of the reason that the pandemic caused consumers to order more goods online rather than shopping in stores. Hence, taking advantage of this opportunity the prices were raised. Profits sore at both courier companies even as they grappled with new expenses to keep workers safe and to handle an influx of residential deliveries, which are more costly than multipackage business shipments.
The surcharge is “positive for both” FedEx and UPS, Allison Landry, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, wrote in a note to clients Friday. FedEx surged 58% in the 12 months through Thursday and UPS jumped 39% while the S&P 500 advanced 16%. FedEx fell 1.2% to $253.28 at 1:03 p.m. Friday in New York.
Any shipping charges or fees applied to packages that are additional to the carrier’s base rates are surcharges and they are a “necessary part” of FedEx’s pricing strategy on e-commerce business, Brie Carere, the company’s marketing chief, said at a conference call with analysts last month.
According to a report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners LLP (CIRP), it is shown that as of Dec. 31, 2020, more than half of Amazon.com Inc. Prime members (52%) registered themselves for an annual membership, up from 49% just three months earlier. It was mainly during the holidays that Amazon saw such a rise in monthly Prime members as shoppers are looking to take advantage of the benefits like free shipping, early shipping that too without making a long term commitment.
“Since Amazon introduced a monthly payment option, Amazon has often seen a jump in monthly memberships in the December quarter,” said Mike Levin, co-founder of CIRP, in a statement. “For the first time in four years, the percentage of annual memberships increased in the holiday shopping quarter. In other words, in the December quarter new and renewing members took advantage of the lower annualized cost of a yearly membership, and with that made a longer commitment to Amazon Prime. These new members will be around well into 2021.”Josh Lowitz, another CIRP co-founder, in a statement
This Covid-19 global pandemic was characterized to have been driven by online shopping, hence soaring the number of e-commerce sales. The same formula worked for Amazon as well. CIRP claims that there are 142 million Prime members in the U.S. In fourth-quarter earnings announced in Jan. 2020, Amazon’s Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said the company had reached 150 million members with “more people [joining] Prime this quarter than ever before.”
With more shoppers heading online to purchase goods including groceries, home furnishings, and clothing, fulfillment has taken on increased importance. Amazon’s delivery options and benefits stand out for many consumers. COVID-19 likely drove much of this growth, with customers needing to order more items, more frequently as they work and study from home. The annual growth rate in the base of members was the highest in four years.
Prime membership is important to Amazon for several reasons. The retailer’s subscription revenue, largely made up of Prime membership fees, totaled $19.21 billion in 2019, a 35.2% jump year over year. Even more important, once a consumer signs up for Prime, he is unlikely to cancel his membership.
CIRP also estimates that 30 million additional shoppers used an Amazon Prime membership in the year, as consumers naturally flocked to the free shipping and streaming media benefits as the pandemic kept them at home.
Shoppers wait in line to pay for their purchases at a Walmart store in Los Angeles, California on November 24, 2009, a few days before �Black Friday� the day after Thanksgiving which kicks off the holiday shopping season. Retailers are hoping �doorbuster� deals will stimulate sales despite the weak economy. AFP PHOTO / Robyn Beck (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
Two huge global entities, Walmart and Western Union today announced a new agreement that will, for the first time, enable Western Union money transfer services at Walmart locations across the U.S. bringing greater choice and value to millions of customers. In simple terms, Walmart and Western Union are entering into an agreement together to offer in-store payments and transfers. The services will include both domestic as well as international money transfers, bill payments, and money orders. The global Services will be offered at more than 4,700 Walmart brick-and-mortar stores with a rollout planned to begin in the spring of 2021.
“Walmart is much more than a place where customers shop. To millions, it’s also a place they trust for their financial needs as well,” Wilbert Noronha, vice president of financial services at Walmart, said in a press release on Tuesday (Jan. 19).
Jean Claude Farah, the President of global money movement platform –Western Union believes that this integration with retail giant Walmart will enable them not only to bring the best of their money movement and payment service capabilities but also its expand its consumer services across the country and globe.
Western Union enables cross-currency, cross-border transfers in 200 countries and territories. The tie-up with Walmart gives people the ability to transfer funds to family and friends almost anywhere. Customers can receive funds in cash or have them transferred directly into a designated bank account.
The world’s largest retailer, Walmart provides transparent financial services to its customers through the providers they want. Millions of Americans rely on Walmart’s transparent, Everyday Low Price strategy to help customers conduct essential financial activities through a marketplace offering. With the addition of Western Union, Walmart customers will be presented with more choice, convenience, and access than ever before. It said that since 2014, it has saved people in excess of $1.5 billion across its financial services offerings.
“Together with Walmart, we have a shared purpose of supporting our customers who rely on us to send money to make everyday purchases, including essentials like healthcare and groceries. In an age when speed, security, convenience, and trust mean everything, we are offering customers greater ease, reliability, access, and confidence with every transaction,” Farah said.
In the race to step up, grocery aisles across America have decided to add smart” shopping carts which will enable to track what consumers pick up off the shelves and also allow them to pay without having to stand and wait in queues, hence making the whole system convenient and fast-moving.
Kroger, an American retail company founded by Bernard Kroger recently adapted itself to the everything going digital trend and rolled out new “KroGo” shopping carts. It is a smart cart with a built-in scale and camera, providing an easier shopping experience with less contact and faster checkout. The system is still just being tested at its Madeira, Ohio grocery store outside of Cincinnati.
Designed by a company called Caper Inc., the new carts come with a built-in video screen that is essentially a smaller version of the scanners that Kroger has at its checkout lines. The customers/users can scan and bag right from the cart as they shop, then pay from the cart and exit quickly through the self-checkout area.
Amazon has a similar kind of service that it offers called a Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart with sensors that appear to be even more elaborate than what Kroger’s carts offer. However, unlike Kroger’s system, Dash Carts have the ability to scan coupons. They can also access shopping lists that customers have prepared ahead of time using Amazon Alexa. When customers finish shopping, they walk through special checkout lanes that finalize their tab without human interaction, bill their accounts and email receipts.
How to shop with KroGo powered by Caper:-
Any personal items should be placed in the front basket. Then, the customers have to place their reusable bags in the main cart and weigh them before they start shopping. They must be sure to scan their Shopper’s Card so as to earn fuel points on their purchases and redeem any digital coupons they’ve downloaded if any. The customers can scan each item as they shop, weigh produce directly on the cart and even put items back on the shelf (in case they don’t need it anymore) and remove them from the tab. The cart gives shoppers a running subtotal of purchases as items are added, helping people stay on budget. Once the shopping is done, they can use your credit or debit card to pay on the cart, and then simply can exit quickly through the self-checkout area.
The company is promoting the new technology in the Ohio store with signage that plays well in the COVID-19 era, reading “Faster Checkout. Limited Contact.”, however, it is not sure whether they will roll out the smart carts at more of its 2700 stores.
With the vision of expanding and wanting a bigger piece of the online retail market in the country, Mukesh Ambani’s renowned brand- Reliance Retail is on plans to link its e-commerce application JioMart with Whatsapp within the next 6 months. This is a very intelligent move to make 400 million users of India’s most popular messaging service order products from JioMart, hence expanding its reach on a large scale basis. The users would be able to order products from JioMart without even leaving the application Whatsapp, making it more convenient for the users to order online.
JioMart was launched in May 2020 after Facebook inked a mega $5.7 billion deal with Reliance Retail for a 9.9% stake last year. This platform offers everything from fruits and vegetables to household products on its app just like Flipkart and Amazon.
This integration will result in JioMart catapult its reach across the country, India. This however also allows Reliance Retail to pose a serious challenge to Flipkart and Amazon’s domination in India’s fast-growing online retail market. Ambani is of hope to grab a bigger share of India’s retail market through such a move in order to reach $1.3 trillion by 2025 also considering the fact that Reliance is already India’s biggest offline retailer.
“It is essentially marrying of strengths for both companies. The JioMart integration is essentially adding a retail layer for WhatsApp chats. With payments now available on WhatsApp, it makes all the more sense. Now your chats, retail, and payments will all be integrated within the same interface,” said Jayanth Kolla, founder and partner, Convergence Catalyst, a research firm. A Reliance Retail spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking comment. “Through our investment with Jio, we’re going to bring millions of small businesses and the customers they serve into the digital economy. This will make it easier for businesses to connect with customers and close sales,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
Both the companies are believed to be benefitted from the integration. JioMart grows as an online platform and at the same time the idea is to keep users withing Whatsapp, increasing its engagement rate by users which the API’S (application programming interface) allows. APIs for any catalog-based service will be built in such a way that as soon as new inventory comes in, it will keep feeding two-directional data to both Jio systems and what is front-ended on WhatsApp.
According to the latest report by Bloomberg, YouTube has started working its way on a new feature that would enable content creators to tag products being displayed in the video clips. This way, they could provide access to direct shopping options and broadening the scope of e-commerce opportunities in the application.
The app is currently working on a stage of testing where it could launch a live test of its product tags with selected creators. It’s a pilot program with the new tags visible to users in the US on iOS, Android, and desktop.
In a statement provided by YouTube, it says:-.
“We’re testing a new way for people to easily discover and purchase products featured in YouTube videos. Creators in this pilot can add certain products to their videos. Viewers can then see a list of featured products by clicking the shopping bag icon on the bottom left corner of the video. From there, viewers can explore each product’s page to see more information, related videos, and purchase options for that product.”
YouTube has taken this step to include such a feature in its programming keeping the current circumstances in consideration. There has been a rapid shift towards e-commerce business accelerated mainly by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is even believed that pandemic had sped the growth of e-commerce by 5 years, pushing brands into a new era of digital platforms and consumption. Moreover, according to research released recently, it is claimed that an increasing number of consumers are now looking to shop via video content, with live video, in particular, providing a new perspective.
With the rising digital wave and all platforms (like Facebook, Snapchat, etc) working to add in advanced e-commerce tools linked into their video clips and tools, the expectation will soon be that all social media content will be ‘shoppable’, with easy links from every image and clip that enable the purchase of any item displayed. Hence, YouTube could not be left behind and this “tag to shop”/ “product tag” feature is being worked on to be added.
YouTube’s parent company Google has actually been working on this functionality for years – back in 2017, Google showcased its Cloud Video Intelligence API, which is able to identify objects within video content. As noted, it’s a logical expansion of YouTube’s capacity, with the platform already adding in eCommerce product listings and tools like AR Try-On ads considering the fact that it is just a matter of time when the whole web will become shoppable.
Uber is in search of investors so that it can launch a separate start-up for the robotics division of Postmates, Postmates X. It is an on-demand delivery start-up that Uber acquired last year for $2.65 billion. The start-up is being called Serve Robotics, a nod to the yellow and black-emblazoned autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and piloted by Postmates X. Serve Robotics is not a legal company yet, but serverobotics.com was registered on Jan. 6.
It recently partnered with Pink Dot Stores for deliveries in West Hollywood, will likely be the centerpiece of the new startup. To this, however, Uber refused to comment.
The company is led by Ali Kashani, who heads up Postmates X and leads the Serve program. Anthony Armenta would lead the startup’s software efforts and Aaron Leiba would be in charge of hardware — keeping the same positions they hold at Postmates X. Uber is in discussions to retain about a 25% stake in the new startup, according to one source familiar with the deal.
Postmates’s interest in walking delivery bots began in the year 2017 after the company quietly acquired Kashani’s start-up Loc Inc. The company came out public with its first Serve autonomous delivery bot in December 2018, with a commercial rollout planned in Los Angeles. It’s now operating in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Rather than working with a partner, Postmates chose to use its own delivery data to form the foundation of how it would design and deploy a sidewalk bot, according to comments Kashani made during a TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 event in October.
“When you look at the data and see that over half of the deliveries are within a short distance it becomes a no-brainer — these robots can actually complete them,” Kashani said at the time, in reference to the application of autonomous delivery bots for delivery.
The Postmates X made use of historical delivery data from the company to develop a simulation, which was then used in the design of the Serve bot. It enabled the team to determine what battery life would be needed and the size of the cargo hold, among other features.
One of the main reasons for Uber acquiring Postmates is to assist Uber Eats’ scale in U.S. food delivery, boosting its market share from 29 percent to 37 percent. Uber’s rideshare business fell over 80 percent amid the pandemic. The company’s quest to scoop up Postmates was cleared by the Department of Justice in November. Uber had originally tried to acquire delivery platform Grubhub, but the deal sputtered over antitrust concerns.
A couple of Amazon’s foreign websites have been included in the U.S government’s annual “notorious markets” list on the grounds that they host some counterfeit goods.
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) office released its 2020 review of notorious markets on Thursday. The list identifies e-commerce sites and companies that are believed to be facilitating the sale of counterfeit goods, engaging in intellectual property violations, or piracy.
Amazon sites of the countries like the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, and Italy were included in the report. Those who had complained alleged that Amazon’s counterfeit removal process is slow, even for companies that are enrolled in its brand protection programs. They also claimed that Amazon doesn’t do a thorough examination of third-party sellers on its marketplace or make it clear to brands and consumers “who are selling the goods.”
Amazon argued against the trade representative’s report, which didn’t include Amazon’s U.S. site, and pointed to its extensive programs and tools that are designed to stop counterfeiters.
However, Amazon believes that the report issued is some kind of personal vendetta against the company and nothing more than a desperate stunt in the final days of this administration. “Amazon does more to fight counterfeit than any other private entity we are aware of.” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
Representatives from the USTR didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly been careful of Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos throughout his four-year time period. Bezos owns The Washington Post, which Trump has criticized for its unfavorable protection of his administration. Amazon has also claimed it did not win a Pentagon cloud-computing contract, which might be valuable as a lot as $10 billion, as a result of assaults from Trump in opposition to the corporate and Bezos.
The amazon sites were added for the first time to the USTR list in 2019. In that year itself, the company started mentioning counterfeit products as a risk factor in its annual filing. Apart from Amazon, other companies named on the list include the Chinese e-commerce site Pinduoduo, South American e-commerce company Mercadolibre, and file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.
Amazon as an action against the allegation has upgraded its efforts to curtail counterfeits as the third-party marketplace has grown. The marketplace now accounts for more than half of the company’s overall sales and hosts millions of third-party merchants.
The company has pursued counterfeiters in court, rolled out various programs to seek and detect sales of counterfeit goods, and in June launched the Counterfeit Crimes Unit, made up of former federal prosecutors, investigators, and data analysts, to mine the site for fraudulent activity.
As a result of these and other efforts, 99.9% of pages viewed by customers on the site have never had a valid report of counterfeit, the spokesperson said.
How to sell on Etsy & 10 Best selling items on Etsy
For all those who have not heard of Etsy which is an e-commerce platform, let us take you down one exciting journey where you will not only learn about a new platform but also get to know how you can sell on Etsy as well as the top-selling items that can be sold on Etsy.
One thing you need to remember is that on Etsy, you will mostly find items that are custom-made, vintage, or stuff that has been handmade or personalized based on orders. This means it is a niche platform where people know what they are wanting to buy and sellers also need to understand who they are targetting.
Talking about selling on Etsy, you will have the first questions such as what to sell on Etsy or things to sell on Etsy. If you have figured out what to sell on Etsy, you will also have the question of whether it is worth investing your time and money to sell on Etsy because you can devote the same time on any other platform as well.
One thing we have understood is that on the point of whether it is worth selling on Etsy, let us tell you that it very well is if you are planning to run a small business that makes thousands of dollars per year on average with most of them as your profit.
However, if you are looking for a medium or large business then you might as well invest in warehouses and sell on platforms such as Amazon or others.
Why sell on Etsy?
While you think of expanding your business towards the online Market, Etsy comes to be the best one to make your business more effective. There is more than one reason why to sell on Etsy, which is definitely worth looking for. Here are the reasons:
It Comes with No Commitment
You literally do not have to commit to any kind of particular time frame for working in your Etsy shop. You can open an Etsy shop any day and list your product and post it for selling. Also, at any time, you can stop selling a particular product.
You Can Stop Any Time
In case you think that you are not able to continue with the shop due to your other commitments, you can simply stop at your shop at any time. You can abandon it for some time until you are feeling that you are ready to start selling again.
It is Easy to Keep Private
You can easily start a shop while maintaining your privacy and can also never tell anyone what you sell. Etsy lets you manage everything easily that you can actually sell your products without making any noise.
Easy to Keep Low Costs
If you want to start selling at a low cost for your products, then Etsy is the best platform ever. There is no need to pay for hosting or for a monthly fee to sell on Etsy. Also, the paid shop option is not necessary for improving your search rankings.
It is very Simple to Manage
Etsy is undoubtedly very simple to manage. They offer a great number of tools with the platform for managing all your money and payments. You can easily use the stats tabs to give your shop a very clear stat to know from where all your traffic is coming from.
How to sell on Etsy in 2021?
The first question we all have when finding out about a new e-commerce platform is how to sell on that platform so it is obvious that you will be wondering how to sell on Etsy.
Basically, selling your products on Etsy is similar or even easier than selling on other e-commerce platforms. You just have to go to their website which is Etsy.com and then creates a new account.
After that, you can click on the Shop Manager and click on ‘Your shop’ if you are a new seller. Then add a new listing for whatever you need to sell on the platform and start selling to make money.
From the Etsy shop settings, you can set your preferences for how you want to sell your products. You need to select the language for describing your products. Also, you need to select the currency that your location accepts.
While selecting the shop name, make sure it is creative and perfectly reflects your brand. In case your name is synonymous with your products, it is going to be very effective for the customers to remember.
While listing your products, add clear and detailed photos with a minimum of 5 images that are taken from different angles. You need to adjust the thumbnails to make your product easy to find. Proceed to complete your listing information. Use the 13 tags for each of the products. You need to enter your inventory quality and price to make you’re selling more effective. Also, do not forget to set the shipping fee for your country.
Add the payment methods which are convenient for you. Also, it is best to add different options to make things easier for your customers. Include billing information and then finish off with optimizing your shop. You can upload your profile with a very nice front to make it look very effective.
What to sell on Etsy?
Now that we have told you how to sell on Etsy and list your products for sale, the next obvious question would be what you can sell on Etsy. The question is also what sells on Etsy more if you are a new seller looking to offer a variety of products.
Don’t you worry as we have made the task extremely easy for you as we have sorted out the list of all the best-selling Etsy items as well as things to sell on Etsy? Here, you can also get to know which are the most popular items on Etsy as well as what sells the most on Etsy.
10 Best Selling items on Etsy? (Most Demanded Products on Etsy)
If you have seen how the e-commerce industry works, you would know that there are some things that people like to buy online and others that people prefer to buy offline. So we have made a list of 10 Best Selling items on Etsy that you can also offer to your audience.
1. Craft and Supplies
One of the first items that have always been on the best-selling lists on Etsy and is currently the best selling item on Etsy as per category is Craft and Supplies.
One thing to note is that we did mention Etsy being mostly about personalized items as well as items that are handmade. So it is obvious to see that the items selling most on Etsy are Craft and Supplies.
In the Craft and Supplies category, it is worth mentioning that crochet patterns, as well as knitting partners, are trending and selling very well.
Apart from that, people are buying yards of yarn so that they can keep themselves busy with their hooks and needles knitting sweaters, and whatnot.
2. Handmade Items
After Craft and Supplies, we also know that handmade wooden, as well as clay items, are also very popular on Etsy. Talking about handmade items, things that come to mind are wooden boxes as well as handmade invites and other things.
Now, we would like to inform you of a fact that wooden boxes are definitely items that sell well on Etsy. To add to that, hand-carved invitations, as well as pots and other items, can also be sold on the platform.
3. Jewelry
You would know that women love their jewelry and ornaments and we know that the best way to surprise a woman with gifts from their husbands or boyfriends or a brother gifting things to her sister would be jewelry.
It is also worth noting that while gold or platinum jewelry can be costly for many, you can buy stuff on Etsy that will be affordable as well as handmade which makes it more unique.
Talking about jewelry, you can sell items on Etsy such as rings, anklets, hair vines, necklaces as well as other types of ornaments. Well, we can tell you for a fact that your loved ones would love what you have bought for them and this tells you that people you are selling to will also like them.
4. Wedding
Wedding is something where people like to buy customized stuff or items that are personalized to them because we all know that weddings are special and you wouldn’t want to buy something that is generic.
Therefore, Etsy is the best way to sell wedding items because people are most likely to buy items from you as well as even personalize items according to their liking. Talking about the top-selling items on Etsy in the Wedding category, the products that have sold well have been stuff such as wedding bells as well as bouquets and corsages.
Also, Veils and hats with velvety purses have also been selling well. As you can see, these are items that are used commonly in weddings and you might not know how much people have been buying from Etsy.
5. Accessory
Next up is a common category of products that sell well on Etsy which are the Accessory category. For example, you would have seen that there are accessories for scarves as well as hats as well as hair accessories such as pins or clips and something like that.
Now, we can tell you these accessories do sell well on Etsy and that you can also start selling them on Etsy to become one of the bestsellers on the platform.
6. Paper and Party Supplies
Now that we have mentioned all the accessories as well as jewelry that sells well on Etsy, it is not to say that Etsy is a platform for selling such items only. Because the next items in our list are from the Paper and Party Supplies category.
This means that people from the office supplies category are also selling well on the platform and you can replicate the same as well. Talking about the paper and party supplies category, we are talking about selling items such as custom cards as well as paper straws along with personalized and elegant posters including other items.
7. Clothing
Another category that people are making money from on Etsy is the clothing category. We have seen that personalized as well as hand-made clothes have sold well in the past on Etsy and have continued to sell well right now too.
As far as the particular clothing is concerned, you can sell items on Etsy such as T-shirts, Trousers, Hobos, Swimwear, custom printed socks, and more clothing items that you think about.
The best part about selling on Etsy is that you can take orders based on your customers’ needs which is what people are also looking forward to.
One category you can target inside Clothing on Etsy is baby clothing products. For example, you can sell items that have the names of their babies on the clothes, which do sell very well on the platform.
8. Vintage
The vintage category is one of the most passionate categories on Etsy which will attract serious buyers who are nostalgic about some products and would want to buy them at any cost.
Talking about the vintage category, you can think of selling anything from old cameras as well as phones to things such as old coins, fossils, jeans, cutlery products from back in the day, and other vintage products.
9. Home & Living
You also have to keep in mind that since Etsy is a platform for selling handmade and personalized stuff and since people like to decorate their homes where they live, both of these interests collide to make a perfect recipe for sales.
Talking about sales, we know for a fact that home and living products sell well on Etsy and that people love to buy customized decoration items for their homes on Etsy.
In particular, items such as wall decorations as well as wallpapers along with candles and small furniture are being sold well on Etsy.
10. Art & Collectibles
Last but not the least, we have the Art & Collectibles category on Etsy to complete our list of Top 10 best-selling items on Etsy.
It is worth mentioning that Art on Etsy goes hand-in-hand because Art has to be personalized and customized and Etsy is the best platform to sell such stuff.
As you would expect, therefore, items such as paintings or prints, or figurines have sold very well on Etsy.
If you have the talent, you can sell paintings of people who have been made from photos of themselves along with figures you can create from clay or something permanent.
Now that we have mentioned how to sell on Etsy as well as what you can sell on Etsy along with a list of the Top 10 items that are selling well on Etsy, we do hope that we have covered all the things that are needed for you to succeed on Etsy.
One thing to keep in mind is that Etsy is a very price-conscious platform meaning that you have to set your price of the product correctly in order to sell well because if you price the items too high, your products might not sell well and if you price it lower, you can sell well but the profits might be lower.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ON ETSY (FAQs)
Does Etsy charge transaction fees for selling products?
Yes, Etsy does charge transaction fees for selling products on the platform and we can inform you that these charges are 5% of the total item price. This also includes any shipping costs or wrapping costs for the customers meaning you don’t have to worry about the same.
Do you have to pay Etsy to list items on the platform?
Talking about listing items on Etsy, you do have to pay a small amount of fee for listing on the platform. The nominal charge for listing items on Etsy is just 20 cents per item.
How does my Etsy item listing stay on the platform?
As we have mentioned that Etsy takes 20 cents to list any items on the platform, it is worth noting that this fee is for a reason as well.
Once you have paid 20 cents to list your item on Etsy, you can have your product listed for as long as four months.
If your item does not sell for the next 4 months on Etsy, you can choose to renew your listing by paying 20 cents and re-listing your item for the next 4 months.
Does Etsy charge PayPal fees on your orders?
We know that PayPal has been the chosen platform for processing payments by most customers on Etsy. Now, we need to inform you that Etsy does charge PayPal fees for every order that gets processed.
Talking about the charges, you will also have to pay a flat fee of 30 cents per transaction processed by PayPal to Etsy along with 2.9% of the total value of the transaction.
If a customer chooses to pay via credit card, Etsy charges payment processing fees of 3% of the item’s total price as well as 25 cents per transaction.
Amazon.com, Inc. which is an American multinational technology company based in Seattle, Washington, has been accused of selling ebooks at inflated prices, and it faces a class-action lawsuit for the same on Thursday. They have been accused of carrying out this activity in collusion with some publishers.
For anyone unknown to the concept of ebook on a digital platform like Amazon, here is how it is like. Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. To access ebooks on Amazon, one simply has to Go to read.amazon.com to open Kindle Cloud Reader. You may need to sign in with your Amazon account. Your Kindle Library is displayed on the main page. Select a book to start reading.
However, the lawsuit alleges that Amazon and the five largest U.S. publishers, collectively called the ‘Big Five’, agreed to price restraints that in turn cause consumers to overpay for eBooks purchased from them through a retail platform other than Amazon.com. The “Big Five” includes Hatchet, Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin-Random House, and Simon & Schuster.
To such an allegation, spokespeople for both Amazon and Macmillan declined to comment. Spokespeople for the other publishing companies were not immediately available for comment.
The case was brought by law firm Hagens Berman and filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint states that Amazon’s co-conspirators were also involved in a similar lawsuit earlier. In 2011, Hagens Berman filed a similar lawsuit against Apple and the “Big Five” over ebook prices.
“Amazon’s abuse of power proves, yet again, that when it comes to violating antitrust laws, the New Economy is up to the same old tricks,” Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman, said in a statement.
In response to a threat to their profit arising from the discounted pricing of the retailer of e-books, as part of a plan to artificially fix ebook prices, publishers entered into agreements with Apple allowing publishers all wholesale Changed from model to an agency model. The successful class action culminated in Apple settling for $ 400 million (about Rs 2,900 crore) and publishers settling for even more.
Drivers can enjoy Alexa by using simple voice commands, all while keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel: Check the news, control smart home devices like lights or thermostats, add items to their shopping cart, and access tens of thousands of Alexa skills. (Photo by John F. Martin for Cadillac)
Amazon wants to bring its voice assistant technology, Alexa to the table so that automakers can tailor their digital assistant to their liking enabling them to create their own in-car voice assistants. The company made an announcement on Friday about its new service- Alexa Custom Assistant that will enable automakers and device manufacturers to develop their own digital assistant, built on Amazon’s Alexa voice-enabled technology.
The first company to have agreed to build its own Alexa based AI carmaker Fiat Chrysler (FCA), which has had an ongoing relationship with Amazon to integrate some of its technology, like Amazon Fire TV-powered screens, into its cars. The financial deal between the two of them has not been yet disclosed. Moreover, it is also not clear if Amazon is charging FCA (Fiat Chrysler) to license the AI tech rather than giving it out for free.
Amazon also mentions that it has intentions of giving this technology to all companies and not just auto-makers so that a faster, cheaper, less complex, and tailored voice experience could be built instead of simply bolting on an integration with a third-party service.
Alexa Custom Assistant not only enables custom’s AI products to stay in control of and dictate information about special features but also can handle more general app-related requests like music playback and directions. “For example, if a customer asks Alexa to roll down a car window, or how to troubleshoot a device, the request will be routed to the brand’s assistant. If a customer asks the brand’s assistant to play an audiobook, the request will be routed to Alexa.
“The real way that you’re going to want to interact with a voice assistant in your car is to have it built-in,” Dave Limp, Amazon’s top hardware exec, told CNBC on Friday in a “Squawk Alley” interview. “It just takes time to do that.
“Now, with the addition of Alexa Custom Assistant, it allows us to add even more flexibility for those auto manufacturers to add it in and build it in moving into the future,” he added.
The offering is the latest example of Amazon’s efforts to extend Alexa’s reach beyond voice-activated smart speakers. The company has baked the digital assistant into a range of devices around the home, including microwaves, clocks, and smart plugs.
The company faces competition from huge Silicon Valley companies like Apple and Google since they are also looking to convince carmakers to incorporate their companies’ technologies into various different systems. So far, Amazon has also formed partnerships with a growing list of automakers including General Motors, Ford, BMW, Audi, Toyota, Hyundai, and Nissan.
When on one hand consumer online shopping habits have led to a downfall of revenues for some web storefronts, at the same time this global pandemic period trends have also breathed new life into the market for developer tools that help elevate e-commerce sites run smoothly for shoppers.
LA-based, Nacelle is a headless e-commerce platform made for developers who want to create superior customer buying experiences. It is one of many e-commerce infrastructure start-ups that helps earn attention from investors amid Covid.
The start-up accounts itself as a JAMstack (an architecture designed to make the web faster, more secure, and easier to scale) for e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, etc). It claims to offer a developer platform that delivers greater performance and scalability to online storefronts and cuts down on hosting costs. Nacelle builds an easier path for e-commerce brands to embrace a headless structure and provide a more streamlined experience.
This company raised an $18 million Series A investment led by Inovia with participation from Accomplice, Index Ventures, High Alpha, Silas Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. In the mid-2020, the company had closed a $4.8 million seed round, the speedy pace of their Series A’s close seems to speak to the investor enthusiasm that has deepened around companies operating in the e-commerce world.
“It’s no secret that commerce has done well during COVID,” CEO Brian Anderson. “Not only did we get this subtle structural change with COVID that I believe is long-lasting, but merchants have been focusing more on performance.”
The company’s customer base mostly includes small to medium-sized e-commerce sites. It works in close contact with agencies for customer referrals. Its central point of focus has always been making sure that they manage to bring customers onboard to its platform without causing any undue headaches. It can be “very painful to migrate data” with other services, Anderson says. The company’s service is “anti-rip-and-replace
Launched in October by Co-founder and CEO Paul Palmieri, Tradeswell made an announcement that it has raised $15.5 million in Series A funding.
Tradeswell has its central focus on six key areas of e-commerce businesses — marketing, retail, inventory, logistics, forecasting, lifetime value, and financials — with the key goal of allowing those businesses to improve their net margins, rather than simply driving more clicks or purchases. The platform can fully automate some processes, such as buying online ads. Palmieri suggested that in some cases (like ad-buying), Tradeswell will replace existing software, while in other cases it will integrate.
As proof of its previous work, Tradeswell pointed to the work it did with a personal care brand on Amazon Prime Day, with total sales doubling versus the previous Prime Day and profits increasing 67%.
The startup has now raised a total of $18.8 million. The Series A was led by SignalFire, which also led Tradeswell’s seed round, while Construct Capital, Allen & Company, and The Emerson Group also participated.
“With the explosion of e-commerce over the past year, Tradeswell is perfectly positioned to help brands manage the complexity of online sales across an ever-increasing number of platforms and marketplaces,” said SignalFire founder and CEO Chris Farmer in a statement. “Paul and his team bring together a unique blend of experience in data, marketing, and logistics to address the challenges of today and a rapidly evolving market in the years ahead with a central command center to optimize profitable growth.”
The company is going to allocate its funds to continue investing in the product; hence, building more integrations so that more types of pf data become “more liquid”. Eventually, this will enable the platform to make more real-time decisions. When it was launched, it had around 100 customers and Palmieri told me that number has subsequently grown past 150. For example, Steve Tracy of Red Monkey Foods and San Francisco Salt Company said in a statement that the startup’s “unique, comprehensive, algorithmic approach has helped us grow sales, identify commercialization opportunities and forecast far more accurately.” He hopes for the numbers to keep on growing, not expecting any shift in e-commerce once the pandemic ends.
The San Francisco, CA-based company, Affirm Holdings, which offers “buy now pay later” loans for online purchases, had raised the proposed deal size for its upcoming IPO on Monday. Affirm says its mission is to give people without credit history or savings accounts access to small loans. It allows consumers to pay for purchases in fixed amounts without deferred interest, hidden fees, or penalties, according to the Affirm IPO filing. Shoppers can choose a schedule for paying back the loans with varying interest rates.
The company had been planning to raise an amount of $1.0 billion in exchange for 24.6 million shares that were offered at a price range of $41 to $44. Initially, it had planned to offer the same numbers of shares at a range of $33 to $38. At the midpoint of the revised range, Affirm Holdings will raise 20% more in proceeds than previously anticipated, commanding a market value of $12.8 billion and an enterprise value of $12.3 billion (20.6x EV/sales).
Founded in 2012, the company’s financing platform includes 3 core elements, that is, a point-of-sale payment solution for consumers that allows payment for purchases in fixed amounts, merchant commerce solutions, and a consumer-focused app. As of Sept. 30, Affirm said, “more than 6.2 million consumers have completed approximately 17.3 million transactions with over 6,500 merchants on our platform. That led to a total gross merchandise volume, net of refunds, of approximately $10.7 billion transacted through its platform since July 1, 2016.” In the third quarter, Affirm reported revenue of $174 million, up 98% from the year-ago period. In addition, it reported a net loss of $15.3 million vs. a loss of $30.8 million in the year-ago quarter.
It had plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol AFRM. Big companies like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Allen & Company, RBC Capital Markets, Credit Suisse, and Barclays were the underwriters on the deal. It was expected to price during the week of January 11, 2021. Hence, the company (AFRM) raised $1.2 billion with an initial public offering that priced well above expectations and gave it a fully diluted valuation of about $15 billion. The Affirm IPO priced late Tuesday and will begin trading on Wednesday. 24.6 million shares are offered at $49, well above its estimated price range of $41 to $44. Investors include Founders Fund, a venture capital firm formed by former PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Other investors include Khosla Ventures.
Walmart Inc. is in plans to start its own financial technology company backed by investment firm Ribbit Capital. This investment platform has also aided companies like Robinhood personal finance portal Credit Karma, and other big names in the industry. It was announced this Monday that it will launch its fintech start-up with the help of Ribbit Capital.
Though this big American multinational retail corporation has not yet revealed the name of its new company or even what services it will offer but it did mention that the company will develop unique and affordable financial products for Walmart employees and its customers. “The new company aims to develop and offer modern, innovative, and affordable financial solutions,” the retailer said in a statement.
Shares of Walmart were up 1.5% on the news hours after the trending news went out. Walmart’s market capitalization is $416.7 billion.
The fintech start-up will be majorly owned by Walmart and its board will include numerous company executives like Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs and Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner. Walmart said it will also name independent industry experts to the board and may acquire or partner with other fintech companies.
It was on interacting with millions of customers when Walmart came to know that some of them don’t even have a relationship with a bank or a financial advisor. 6% of adults don’t have a checking, saving, or bank account, as per the Federal Reserve. About 16% are “underbanked,” meaning they have a bank account but also use alternative financial service products, like a money order. Hence, Walmart offers such kind of financial services for customers. For example, it has Walmart MoneyCard, a prepaid debit card that customers can load with money and use for purchases. The card has some features that encourage money management or help people who may have a challenged credit history, such as no overdraft or monthly fees and no minimum balance requirement. The retailer also offers alternative payment plans for customers on a tight budget, such as layaway and Affirm, a fintech company that allows customers to buy an online item immediately and pay in installments.
“For years, millions of customers have put their trust in Walmart to not only save them money when they shop with us but help them manage their financial needs,” Furner said in a news release. “And they’ve made it clear they want more from us in the financial services arena.”
Mastercard has incorporated with NMI and Global Payments Inc. to launch its first live Cloud Tap on Phone pilot with Computer Engineering Group (CEG), a Napa, Calif.-based independent IT Services provider. Cloud tap on phone software is being hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and is one of Mastercard’s innovative next-generation acceptance products.
Mastercard has been leading the transition to contactless payments for years now. This transition was driven as a result of a need for a faster, more convenient, safer, and now cleaner way to make contactless payments. It’s a one-way street with touch-free experiences expected to be permanent for consumers and businesses even after the pandemic ends. In fact, in the third quarter of 2020, contactless penetration represented 41% of in-person purchase transactions globally, up from 37% in the second quarter and 30% a year ago.
This cloud Tap on phone means that any business regardless of size would be able to deliver a new and best-in-class contactless consumer experience using a device that they already own, that is, a smartphone. The company said that the setup “democratizes point-of-scale technology by turning an Android smartphone or tablet into an acceptance device-enabling businesses to receive contactless payments and also minimizing the need to invest in hardware terminals or extra features”. The new pilot program will test the cloud-based point of sale (POS) technology.
With the introduction of Cloud Point of Sale (POS), Mastercard is enhancing its Tap on Phone product and empowering ecosystem partners to develop their own cloud-based products with new tools and capabilities.
“Tap on Phone technology perfectly complements the acceleration of contactless payments in the U.S. market”, said Nick Starai, chief strategy officer, NMI. He further states “ This is a grounding step in creating a world that enables merchants to turn their smartphones into a payment acceptance device without the need for an externally paired physical card reader”
NMI offers “card payment gateways, processing over 1.2 billion transactions a year from retail POS, eCommerce and self-service terminals.” POS also becomes a new channel for Mastercard and our partners to bring value-added services to customers and businesses.
Mastercard will make its pre-certified Cloud POS software development kits (SDKs) openly available in multiple cloud environments, encouraging solution providers, fintech, acquirers, and processors to innovate and co-create new cloud-first products. Mastercard’s pilot with CEG represents the first live deployment of Mastercard Cloud Tap on the Phone anywhere in the world.
