Benelux

Payment provider MultiSafepay recently announced that its transaction volume increased 44 percent year-on-year. According to the company, this is due to customer business growth. In addition, the amount of customers grew 11 percent.

Last Friday, the winners of this year's prestigious Dutch Shopping Awards were announced. Online supermarket Picnic was the winner of the evening, as it won the DHL Best Online Store of the Year award.

Last year, Belgian consumers spent 17.4 billion euros on online purchases. This was a billion euros more than in 2023, representing an increase of 6.7 percent. In 2024, Belgians did a quarter of all their spending online for the first time.

Last year, Dutch consumers spent 36 billion euros online. This was an increase of 5 percent, compared to 2023. At the same time, the number of orders fell by 1 percent. For the first time, the majority of international purchases were placed with Chinese platforms.

Dutch online marketplace Bol has had a good year: sales increased 8.7 percent, reaching 3.1 billion euros. It also earned more from its own platform sales than all sales partners together, figures show. Bol seems to become more like an online store again, instead of a platform.

Online marketplace Amazon is introducing a shipping solution called Easy Ship in Europe, for sellers in the Netherlands and Poland. According to the ecommerce giant, the solution helps sellers ship their products faster, smoother and more cost-effectively.

At least 85 to 95 percent of products from Shein, AliExpress and Temu do not comply with European legislation. This is according to an inspection by European market surveillance authorities. Dutch regulators want a joint approach to protect consumers.

Zalando customers in Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy will have less time to return orders starting tomorrow. The return window will be shortened from 100 days to 30 days. Changes to the loyalty program, Zalando Plus, are also imminent in these three countries.

MediaMarkt saw its marketplace revenue double in the past fiscal year. In the new year, the electronics retailer will open its virtual doors in Belgium, Poland, and Turkey. An additional expansion into new product categories is expected to attract new buyers and sellers.

More than eight in ten Dutch people bought online in the first half of this year, a record. Especially for personal care products, medicines and vitamin pills, more consumers went online.

According to Eurostat figures, 58.1 percent of all consumers in the European Union made a recent online purchase last year. Ecommerce is most established in the Netherlands and least in Bulgaria. In many parts of Southeast Europe, adoption remains below 35 percent.

Shopify now supports payouts in multiple currencies for European merchants. For many larger online retailers, this eliminates a key reason to operate multiple stores simultaneously or opt for alternative ecommerce software.

AliExpress and Shein are among the ten largest online sellers in the Netherlands. And behind market leader bol comes, not Albert Heijn or Coolblue, but Amazon as the number two. That is according to a new ranking by German ECDB, a well-known publisher of ecommerce statistics. What is the ranking based on? And what else stands out?

The Netherlands has more than 100,000 online stores. This figure comes from the latest quarterly report from Statistics Netherlands. At least this number of companies have online sales as their main activity, but the number is increasing. The amount of online stores with a broad product range increased 14 percent last year.

This week, fulfillment company Monta has announced further international expansion. The company will open fulfillment centers in France, Italy and Poland. The new locations will be operational by this time next year.