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How we got here: Trump’s shifting trade policies, including tariff hikes on China, Canada, and Mexico, have created market instability. Meanwhile, signs of economic weakness are emerging, such as increasing layoffs, slowing hiring, and eroding consumer confidence. What does this mean for banking customers? Many consumers are panicking:.

Examples of websites or apps primarily engaged in retail ecommerce include Amazon, Walmart, and Mercado Libre; examples of retail media networks (RMNs) include Amazon's DSP and Mercado Libre’s Audience Deals; includes ads purchased through RMNs that may not appear on ecommerce sites or apps. Latin America’s multibillion-dollar retail media revolution marches on.

Canada ranks near the top of the list of countries for average daily time spent with media, with digital formats driving consumption to new levels.

But France’s programmatic market is still biased toward nonmobile due to consumers’ slight preference for desktop ecommerce over mcommerce. In North America, connected TV (CTV) is carving out a slice of programmatic display ad spending.

Personalized Promotions tools to help advertisers offer discounts in markets including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Japan. A new bidding feature in Performance+ that lets advertisers maximize the overall value of campaigns, not just clicks or conversions, giving them more control to tailor their strategies.

It also built out payments products for shoppers, expanding its partnership with Affirm to offer BNPL in Canada and adding more cashierless checkouts to stores. And it rolled out palm-scanning payment tech at more Whole Foods stores. Amazon also announced a raft of payment promotions during Cyber Weekend to encourage spending on its platform. Amazon is expanding its payment offering on all fronts.

Cross-border concerns: Banks with operations near Canada are wary of potential disruptions to cross-border ties and economic relationships, and how the strained relationships could impact the local economy. Over the next few years, community bankers expect:.

Tesco’s newest venture takes aim at Ocado: The UK grocer’s Transcend Retail Solutions division aims to help international supermarket chains develop their ecommerce operations.

Record holiday sales helped retailers, but purchasing patterns across income groups diverged starkly. Middle- and lower-income consumers grew more selective, carefully weighing where and when to spend amid economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, higher-income shoppers continued to spend freely.

Stellantis paused production at two plants in Canada and Mexico, resulting in the temporary layoffs of 900 employees at supporting plants, and an additional 4,500 hourly workers in Canada. Mercedes could stop selling its cheapest models in the US due to tariffs—a move which will likely be replicated by other manufacturers, putting car ownership out of reach for more consumers.

I think the UK is quite interesting because the UK's actually a very mature e-commerce market and in terms of penetration, e-commerce as a percentage of total retail sales, it's actually ahead of the US. But I think as Paul mentioned, it perhaps comes down to scale.

And Amazon partnered with Affirm to bring buy now, pay later (BNPL) to US and Canadian customers. Related content: Check out what our Retail & Ecommerce analysts have to say about Buy with Prime’s expansion. This article originally appeared in Insider Intelligence's Payments Innovation Briefing—a daily recap of top stories reshaping the payments industry.

The combination of those two factors resulted in 18.9% of new car shoppers taking on a monthly payment north of $1,000 in Q4, an all-time high. Consumers feel squeezed: Those rising costs contribute to a challenging environment since a car is a necessary expense for many consumers.

Methodology: Data is from a February 2023 Metapack report titled "Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark." 8,000+ adults ages 18+ in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US were surveyed by Retail Economics during November 2022.

The market’s retail media ad spending jumped 45.8% in 2024, according to our data, suggesting a rapid shift toward ecommerce-driven advertising channels. Our take: Brazil’s prominence in regional ad spending growth is a reminder that advertisers must look beyond established markets to remain competitive.

Consumers’ adoption of AI banking chatbots varies by country. Though the US and UK promote their tech-friendly banking environments, the geographically concentrated, Big-Six-focused Canadian market has taken the lead in embracing this much-hyped tech.

One ecommerce business saw a 25% increase in customer engagement and a 30% reduction in cart abandonment after implementing an AI chatbot. Klarna predicts its AI assistant will drive a $40 million profit improvement in 2024. In its first month, Klarna’s genAI-powered assistant handled two-thirds of its customer service chats, doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.

Our take: Bank of America’s and Citi’s earnings were steady in Q1 despite the larger uncertain economic environment that started in March with President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico. But both issuers agree that these results may not repeat themselves in the coming quarters.

North of the border, Canadian retailers face their own set of challenges and opportunities. "For retailers in Canada, the necessity is to develop new buy channels and sell channels with domestic partners, as well as with countries with stable trade agreements," said our analyst Paul Briggs.

How this can benefit Amazon: Amazon may be trying to spur Amazon Pay adoption as it struggles to compete against other buy buttons, like PayPal or Shop Pay. Despite internal success, some retailers and larger sellers could be reluctant to adopt Amazon Pay because they don’t want Amazon to access any real estate on their checkout pages.

Retail stores still dominate ecommerce when it comes to new product discovery and conversion. Retail tips for 2024: Focus on value, in-store experience. How retailers like Sephora, Nike, and Amazon bridge the digital-physical gap.

Ecommerce players should prepare for volatility to continue, especially in categories where cost and timing are critical to conversion and customer satisfaction. Retailers that can pivot quickly, diversify fulfillment hubs, or highlight locally made products will be better positioned to absorb shocks.

In Q3, retailers struggled with shopping trends upended by extreme summer weather along with a threat of incoming tariffs. Here’s how they addressed these challenges in their Q3 earnings calls and what it could mean for the industry heading into 2025.

In September, Amazon announced that Prime Video will have ads by default beginning in early 2024 in the US, UK, Germany, and Canada. The move could shake up the market. Amazon estimated that ads on Prime Video will reach more than 115 million US viewers per month, according to a pitch deck obtained by Insider.