The Netherlands

It is said that mobile commerce is the future of online retail. If that's the case, online retailers should have their own app, so consumers can shop online more easily. But developing an app can be very expensive, that's why some online retailers ignore this opportunity. Dutch mcommerce software company JMango360 wants to change this and offers retailers a cheap way to turn their Magento store into an app.

ING today has introduced digital direct debit mandates for its customers. The Dutch bank is the first to offer this service in the Netherlands. Businesses and government agencies are now able to let their customers pay online by authorizing for payments to be collected from them in the future.

Dutch online department store FonQ just declared that it had a total turnover of over 49 million euros in 2014. Most of the sales comes from the Netherlands in which it is based, but the company has online stores in Belgium, Germany and France as well.

Yesterday FedEx announced that it wants to buy the Dutch delivery company TNT for $4.8 billion (4.4 billion euro) to strengthen its ground delivery options in Europe. Currently FedEx is already active in 220 countries but in Europe it's still a relative small company. With TNT it could become one of the major players in the ecommerce logistics industry, at least in the B2B market.

Coolblue, the omnichannel retailer with 323 specialized web stores and 7 physical stores in the Netherlands and Belgium, has won a prestigious award for being the best online store in the Netherlands. This was revealed during the Nationale Thuiswinkel Awards, where winners were chosen in 15 different categories.

Verifone, an American provider of technology that enables electronic payment transactions, has today announced it will open an office in Brussels, Belgium. From here it wants to offer platforms and solutions for secure online payments to customers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Ecommerce in The Netherlands is still growing. Last year, the online retail industry increased by 8.4% to reach 13.96 billion euros. During the last six months of 2014, the ecommerce industry even grew harder than it ever did for the last five years.

Ecommerce is getting more and more popular in the Netherlands. Between 2005 and 2014 the share of people shopping online grew from 50% to 77%. Dutch consumers especially shop online to buy clothing and to book vacations and holiday trips. More than half of online shoppers in the Netherlands bought one of these products during the last twelve months.

Crowdfunding platform Symbid today announced the launch of the Funding Network. This is a platform that connects small- and medium-sized enterprises to all types of funding, whether they are traditional or alternative like crowdfunding.

Coolstuff is ready to expand further abroad. The Swedish online retailer that sells all kinds of crazy gadgets is already selling cross-border to customers in Norway, Denmark, Finland and Germany, but more countries are rising on the horizon. The next step for Coolstuff could be the Netherlands, its founders say.

Consumers are picky. Not only can they choose for your competitor, they can also shop cross-border if your online store doesn't fulfil their needs. A new study shows how consumers across the globe think about shopping online, what they are expecting and experiencing and what's holding them back from buying more online and online mobile.

Payment company Adyen processed over 21 billion euros ($25 billion) in payments transactions in 2014, which is almost an increase of 80% over 2013. At the same time the Dutch company grew by 100% in terms of revenue and by 40% in new customers.

Dutch ecommerce software solution SEOshop today has announced a global partnership with Powa Technologies. As a result of this, online retailers who use the SEOshop software get access to omnichannel sales channels.

UPS has opened three new logistic facility centers in Europe. The facilities are located in Germany and the Netherlands. With the inauguration of these centers, about 20,000 square meter is added to UPS's area of operations in Europe. UPS now has 596 supply chain facilities worldwide with a total area of more than 3 million square meter.

Compare Group, a Dutch holding company consisting of five price comparison services in four different countries, wants to welcome 50% more visitors in 2015 than it had last year. And in terms of clicks it thinks it could achieve even much more growth. We interviewed CEO Ben Kerkhof, who explained to us why the company mostly thinks about a girl named Lisa these days…