France

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.

Spartoo, one of the leaders in selling footwear and fashion in Europe, has launched its own marketplace. It expands it range with over 1,000 brands and 70,000 models. By intergrating the marketplace of Spartoo, vendor partners can benefit from the customer service and the 14 million visitors per month Spartoo has in 20 European countries.

Today, Casino Group announced a project to create an ecommerce platform which combines businesses of Cdiscount and Nova Pontocom. With this transaction a major global ecommerce pure-player arises and the goal is to file for an IPO. Cause that may be a lot easier when the ecommerce division of Casino Group is independent from the supermarket division of the France company.

Multimedia retailer QVC has announced it’s planning the launch of a French website, QVC.fr should be a place to shop online in the second quarter of 2015. With the launch of the French service, QVC expand its global ecommerce business to seven operation reaching nine countries.

The number of so called Click & Drives, where consumers can pick up their goods at a drive-through so they don’t have to get out of the car, went up to 2031 in France. The Click & Drives now outnumber the hypermarkets in France, of which there are 2022 of them.

H&M has expanded its online territory by launching an online store in France, which makes it the tenth market for the Swedish retailer to have an online presence. Of course French customers can shop for a wide range of clothing and accessories, but with H&M Home they can also shop online for home goods.

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.

Oxatis, the French provider of ecommerce software, got a capital injection worth 3.5 million euros from Omnes Capital and A Plus Finance. With the fresh funding, Oxatis is able to boost its research and development team, which is a part of its growth strategy. Also, sixty new features will be added to Oxatis’ software-as-a-service platform.

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.

Darty, one of the biggest retailers on the French market, has launched a marketplace based on the SAAS technology of Mirakl. With this marketplace, which is open to third party sellers, Darty joins other French retailers like Rue du Commerce and Pixmania.

Rakuten is opening a Rakuten Institute of Technology in Paris, which will be the first of its kind in Europe. It already has such R&D centers in Tokyo and New York. The office in Paris will start with five employees and its goal is to ‘fuel the growth of ecommerce around the world’.

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.

Market expansion is seen as a real ecommerce growth opportunity this year. Almost nine in ten European executives, surveyed by CyberSource, are planning to increase focus on expanding their ecommerce business into new markets in 2014. Emerging economies like Russia, Brazil and China are amongst the most popular destinations.

L'Oréal and eBay have finally reached a settlement in a counterfeit case that has been rumbling on for over six years. Since 2007, the two firms were arguing about the sale of counterfeit L’Oréal goods that were being sold on the online marketplace EBay.

Gap, the American clothing retailer, is active in Europe for quite some time. But while it has seen some steady growth in the United States these last couple of years, its presence in Europe is slightly less positive. Revenues here have come down from €516 million in 2010 to €507 million in 2012, despite continued expansion.