France

Etsy, the website where you can buy and sell handmade or vintage products, has made its biggest acquisition, by buying the Paris-based website A Little Market, an online marketplace where also handmade goods can be bought and sold. Etsy is more and more expanding internationally and its strategy is to go deeper into local markets.

Facebook is a very popular social network amongst European online retailers. Except for the United Kingdom, where online retailers are more active on Twitter. But Twitter is however still less popular in the UK than in other countries like Germany or Spain. These two countries have the most social media savvy online retailers, as 90% of them are on Facebook and 80% are on Twitter.

The French ecommerce solution PrestaShop has expanded its ecommerce partnership with payment provider Authorize.Net. Merchants who use software from PrestaShop and have an Authorize.Net account now are able to prcoess payments in multiple currencies.

Mangopay, a payment solution for marketplaces, crowdfunding and collaborative platforms is aiming for transactions totaling 500 million euros by 2015. The capital injection that was announced this week will probably help Mangopay with this as well with its growth ambitions in Europe.

The French ecommerce software company PrestaShop raised 6.75 million euros of investment capital last week from XAnge, Seventure Partners and Serena Capital. The extra capital will be used to conquer other markets, accelerate product development and improve technology. PrestaShop got 3 million euros with a previous funding round in September 2011.

Vente-Privee wants to more than quadruple its revenue in the next ten years. The online retailers wants to achieve this by extending the model of flash sales that it once started in France. The goal is to achieve annual sales of 6 billion euros to 8 billion euros in 2024.

The mobile retail audience in Europe grew by 43 percent over the past year, with 20 percent of smartphone users visiting online retail sites and apps using their mobile phone. Also 1 in 7 smartphone users from the five leading European markets (the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain)have completed a retail transaction on their phone in a month.