Nico Le Bourgeois, head of US Shop operations, will now report to Mu Qing, a former ecommerce vice president at Douyin who now oversees TikTok鈥檚 global ecommerce business. He previously reported directly to Bob Kang, ByteDance鈥檚 ecommerce head. How we got here: There are a few potential reasons for the layering. ByteDance is unhappy with TikTok Shop鈥檚 US performance.
Max鈥檚 global expansion includes launches in the UK and Ireland (Q2 2026) and Germany and Italy (Q1 2026). Live sports and CNN content will remain free for standard and premium subscribers on Max, though they will be removed from the ad-supported tier on March 30.
However, both ecommerce retailers saw only slight increases in daily active users, with Shein鈥檚 UK daily active users growing 5% MoM and Temu鈥檚 growing 10%. While the increase in ad spend was heavily concentrated on the UK and France, the platforms also boosted spend in Germany, Spain, and Italy.
Wero is also live in Germany and France. It will launch in the Netherlands and Luxembourg soon. Why it matters: EPI is a coalition of major European banks, credit institutions, and other payments firms developing a unified, real-time payments system throughout Europe to challenge US-based players like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal.