The global ecommerce landscape: where are we today?

Mark Beresford, Director at Edgar, Dunn & Company, analyses the trends and developments redefining ecommerce today, from AI and omnichannel retail to digital wallets and Embedded Finance.

Ecommerce is no longer to be considered just a separate sales ‘channel’. Today, it is the foundation of global retail. Based on Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) estimates, ecommerce is valued at USD 6.5 trillion and growing at twice the pace of traditional commerce – it now captures nearly 25% of all global retail sales and is forecast to approach 40% in more developed markets by 2030. This explosion is powered not by mere convenience, but by revolutionary trends like AI-driven hyper-personalisation, the dominance of mobile-first social commerce, and the blurring of the lines between physical and digital retail – commonly regarded as omnichannel retailing.

The market is expected to be rapidly reshaped by agentic commerce (AI agents that anticipate and act on behalf of consumers), Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) flexibility, and the dominance of mobile shopping, which now accounts for the majority of ecommerce sales. The digital shopping cart isn’t just an option anymore; it’s a multi-trillion-dollar economy. The global adoption of digital wallets and Embedded Finance, coupled with a sustained focus on hyper-efficient logistics and sustainability, continues to drive growth in the global economy.

The impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, particularly those targeting China, has been especially noticeable in the ecommerce sector due to its deep reliance on global supply chains and the competitive pressure to maintain low prices. Many global ecommerce brands, particularly those selling on platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Shopify, often referred to as ‘direct-to-consumer’ (D2C) sellers, heavily source electronics, apparel, accessories, and homeware goods from China. Tariffs are paid by the US importer. This expense is either absorbed by the seller, eating further into the thin margins, or passed on to the consumer.

The value of global ecommerce sales is estimated by EDC at around USD 6.5 trillion in 2025 and expected to reach roughly USD 9.8 trillion by 2030. As illustrated in the figure below, ecommerce has demonstrated strong growth and continues to grow.

Today, the global ecommerce landscape is in a state of flux, with several factors influencing its development, including a shift in consumer behaviour, the preference for wallets and super apps, QR codes linked with account-to-account (A2A) payments, the increased adoption of embedded payment propositions, and the future potential of agentic commerce.

Consumer behaviour

Consumer behaviour in ecommerce has shifted significantly toward mobile-first shopping and the heavy use of digital wallets, with convenience, security, and rewards driving purchasing decisions.

When consumers have downtime, and their minds are less occupied, it is easy to get drawn into the endless scroll of news and social media posts on social media platforms such as TikTok or Instagram. Potential shoppers who are doomscrolling can experience the release of dopamine, associated with pleasure and rewards. This can reinforce the behaviour, making it harder to break the cycle of doomscrolling. When consumers see advertising for desirable products, it can trigger positive emotions – like excitement, joy, and even anticipation – which, in turn, can neutralise the negative feelings associated with doomscrolling. Potential consumers are likely to be drawn in by visually appealing and emotionally compelling videos, as the soft music and close-up camera angles create a sense of intimacy and intrigue, making the product seem desirable. All of this is usually accessed on a relatively small and intimate screen of a smartphone.

Moreover, these ads are personalised and targeted, ensuring that consumers see a product that aligns with their interests and needs, based on previous searches or social media likes. The ‘shoppable advertisement’ format makes it easy to view product details and prices, and the quick checkout process minimises friction, encouraging an immediate purchase. Shoppable advertisements are a type of online advertising that allows consumers to purchase products directly from the ad itself. Overall, the consumer experience is immersive, captivating, and convenient, making it more likely that they will be persuaded to make a purchase. Traditional online advertising redirects consumers to a brand’s website, whereas shoppable ads enable consumers to complete their purchase without leaving the social media app. This effectively squeezes the three steps – ‘add to cart’, ‘checkout’, ‘purchase’ – into a single step: the ‘purchase’ step. Payment wallets remove friction: no need for card entry, capturing shipping details, and completing biometric authentication. Additionally, they sharply reduce cart abandonment and increase checkout conversion, especially on smartphones.

Payment wallets or super apps?

A payment wallet, known as a digital wallet or e-wallet, is a software-based solution that securely stores a customer’s payment information in a digital format. PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Click to Pay are great examples of software-based wallets for payment credentials.

A super app, on the other hand, is a single mobile solution that bundles multiple services, including messaging, ride-hailing, food delivery, ecommerce, banking, and payments, into one integrated ecosystem. WeChat and Alipay in China, Grab and Gojek in Southeast Asia, Kakao in Korea, and Paytm in India are all super apps that may have started with a single high-frequency use case but then added other services and mini-applications.

Globally, super apps are emerging as a key trend. Providers are bundling wallets, BNPL, microloans, investments, and cross-border payments into unified super apps, creating one channel that can intermediate more of the customer’s financial and social life. Revolut is probably one of the only super apps born in the West. It bundles multi-currency accounts, cards, FX, investing, crypto, insurance, P2P, and budgeting in one interface, and is steadily adding commerce and lifestyle features. Uber is positioning itself as a mobility-and-services super app by combining ride hailing, food and grocery delivery, parcel, travel options, and financial services. Rappi in Latin America is another solid example of a super app. It has expanded from delivery into payments, P2P transfers, travel booking, entertainment, and other on demand services, making it functionally close to some of the Asian super apps.

As wallet and super app usage grows, scanning a QR to pay, join a loyalty programme, or open another software application fits naturally into everyday smartphone behaviour. Linking payments and scanning a QR code is now a widespread trend.

QR codes and payments

QR code-initiated A2A payments are standard practice and widespread in Asia. WeChat Pay and Alipay pioneered QR code payments, where users scan a merchant’s static QR code and pay directly from their digital wallets, which are linked to bank accounts. This approach required minimal hardware and works across millions of merchants, from street vendors to large enterprise retailers. Many merchants are also using QR codes to strengthen the ecommerce checkout by reducing friction, linking physical and digital touchpoints, enabling richer customer interaction, and supporting seamless mobile experiences. IKEA, L’Oréal, Diesel, and many others are already using QR codes to promote app installs seamlessly, drive loyalty programme signups, and offer digital coupons or rewards, accessible via scanning. This validates the trend where in-store and online customer journeys continue to rapidly converge.

A2A payments in ecommerce enable customers to pay merchants directly from their bank accounts, bypassing card networks. This approach is growing rapidly thanks to Open Banking APIs that facilitate secure, instant bank-to-bank transfers. Where real-time payment (RTP) infrastructures exist, this can be a compelling proposition for specific use cases, for both consumers and merchants. At checkout, customers select ‘Instant Bank Transfer’ or ‘Pay by Bank’ as a payment option. A2A is especially valuable for high-volume, low-margin ecommerce businesses seeking to reduce costs, improve payment security, and accelerate cash flow. As Open Banking expands globally, A2A payments in ecommerce have the potential to become popular alternatives to card payments. However, ecommerce merchants adopting A2A payments in leading ecommerce markets – such as the US, the UK, Germany, and France – are not expected to become mainstream until the 2030s.

Wero, the pan-European instant payment system launched by the European Payments Initiative (EPI) in 2024, aims to unify and modernise digital payments across Europe. A bank-backed alternative to Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, Wero is expected to have an uphill battle with a plethora of other options. Country-specific systems in Europe – such as Bizum in Spain, Blink in Poland, Swish in Sweden, Bluecode in Austria and other DACH markets – already exist and have all been successful locally. However, they lack the pan-European unification that Wero aims to deliver. Consolidating instant payments across Europe under a single interoperable wallet for ecommerce will take some time, and it is not expected until the late 2020s. Harmonisation in all 27 countries has always been a challenge under the EU banner.

Conversely, Brazil’s instant payment solution Pix was launched by the Central Bank of Brazil in 2020. It enables real-time A2A payments and money transfers between bank accounts and digital wallets, revolutionising how Brazilians pay and get paid. Pix is a best-practice example of a successful mass-adopted A2A payment system, driving financial inclusion, cost reduction, and ecommerce growth in an emerging market.

Embedded payments

Embedded payments, powered by companies such as Shopify, Stripe, and several others, have been key growth enablers for ecommerce, especially for smaller merchants and businesses, by lowering the cost of entry, providing off-the-shelf features, and enhancing the customer experience. Embedded payments support the acceptance of cards and wallet features integrated within non-financial platforms, such as ecommerce websites or marketplaces. Shopify leverages Embedded Finance to integrate financial services for artists, professional service providers such as plumbers, decorators, healthcare providers, B2B service providers, sports clubs, gyms, and more. Embedded payments (including payouts, merchandise sales, and ticketing), powered by APIs and cloud infrastructure to create seamless, real-time financial interactions, are changing ecommerce and have substantial room to grow into new retail verticals and business segments.

Agentic commerce

Agentic commerce, a form of shopping powered by AI agents, is expected to bring profound changes to ecommerce across several verticals. Retail, insurance, financial services, event ticketing, and travel are just a few verticals where agentic commerce is set to automate personalised search, price comparison, and purchasing of goods and services. It has the potential to fundamentally reshape both the user experience and how many ecommerce business models operate.

In H2 2025 only, several announcements were made about new ecommerce protocols designed to set new standards and technical rules for AI-powered digital assistants (AI agents) to autonomously interact with ecommerce platforms and search, compare, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers. These include Visa, Mastercard, OpenAI/ChatGPT, Stripe, Google, Meta, EMVCo, Trusted Commerce from Forter, Model Context Protocol (MCP), which enables AI agents to communicate with APIs, and Know Your Agent (KYA) to ensure legitimate, auditable interactions within agentic commerce. From an ecommerce merchant perspective, agentic commerce is evolving so much, with new protocols and standards, that it has been suggested an AI agent is needed to ‘orchestrate’ across different standards to enable AI payments and digital identity.

Quantifying the impact of agentic commerce on the global ecommerce landscape has been an interesting challenge for many industry commentators. It will not be a threat to ecommerce growth; rather, it will bring a new type of ecommerce and is more likely to drive growth. Merchants will either embrace agentic commerce and use it to improve customer experience, optimise payments, and potentially increase conversion, which in turn will reduce customer acquisition costs – or worry about losing direct control over customer relationships, as AI agents may act as intermediaries, reducing brand loyalty and weakening direct access. Loyalty and brand equity will become eroded, and the implications for traditional aspirational brands and exclusivity could force high-end brands to protect their unique experiences and control distribution.

Merchants may or may not invest in AI agent-ready technology, ensuring discoverability by AI agents, preserving their brand value through proprietary AI agent deployments, and enhancing seamless integration with the emerging agentic protocols. Today, agentic is a pioneering ‘wild west’ frontier, characterised by fast-paced technological innovation. Unsurprisingly, there is a significant degree of uncertainty in the regulatory framework regarding who holds liability risk, new fraud prevention needs, and agentic commercial business models, all of which are currently unmapped.

Where are we today?

The ecommerce forecast in the graphic above does not change because of agentic commerce. Agentic commerce is expected to handle a growing share of online purchases, potentially up to 25% to 30% by 2030, based on EDC estimates, marking a paradigm shift from traditional ecommerce. What will change for certain is how ecommerce growth will be achieved.

A2A payments are expected to see a sharp uplift due to agentic commerce. Wallets and super apps will continue to evolve and gain consumer adoption, whereas brand loyalty and equity will come under threat. The level playing field for merchants and businesses operating an ecommerce channel today is in a state of huge flux. The scale and pace of change today are comparable to those of the early 2000s, when ecommerce first emerged. The global ecommerce market, based on EDC estimates, is expected to reach around USD 9.8 trillion in sales by 2030, accounting for around 25% of all retail sales worldwide. This penetration demonstrates that ecommerce is a core part of commerce, not just a niche.

This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Global Ecommerce Report 2026, which provides a complete overview of key trends and strategies to help businesses worldwide succeed. Download your free copy today to explore in-depth insights on global ecommerce trends, the latest innovations in payment solutions, and strategies to stay ahead in a competitive market.

About the author

Mark Beresford is a Director at Edgar, Dunn & Company and has over 25 years of strategic consulting experience in the payments sector. He is responsible for the company’s retailer and hospitality payments practice, working with omnichannel merchants and payment service providers across the globe.

 

 

About Edgar, Dunn & Company

Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) is an independent global payments consultancy. The company is widely regarded as a trusted adviser, providing a full range of strategy consulting services, expertise, and market insights. EDC’s expertise includes M&A due diligence, legal and regulatory support across the payment ecosystem, fintech, mobile payments, digitalisation of retail and corporate payments, and financial services.