Marketplace Talk: July's ecommerce news 2026

🤖 Amazon's AI seller assistant lands in Germany but reactions are muted

Amazon has rolled out its Seller Assistant within Seller Central in Germany, making it available to the roughly 47,000 German SMEs selling on the platform. The tool lets sellers ask questions about platform features, policies, and processes, and can personalize responses based on account-specific data. It already answers questions like "Why have my sales declined?" by pulling information across multiple dashboards.

The assistant had already launched in the US and India before making its European debut. Amazon has signaled it is not yet available in other European countries, even though Rufus — the AI shopping assistant for consumers — has been live in Germany since 2024. That gap between the shopper-facing and seller-facing AI rollout is worth noting.

For sellers managing a complex, multi-SKU operation, tools like this are most useful when they surface insights early enough to act on them. The muted first reactions in Germany suggest sellers are reserving judgment, but the direction is clear: Amazon is embedding AI deeper into the operational layer of its marketplace.

🚚 Amazon tightens FBM delivery standards across Europe

Amazon is raising the bar for Fulfilled by Merchant sellers in Germany and the UK. From September 1, 2026, sellers must maintain an On-Time Delivery Rate of at least 90% or risk having listings deactivated. The same threshold applies to Amazon Business deliveries, with enforcement kicking in from October 30. Handling times are also in scope: from July 15, accounts still running a default two-day handling time will be automatically switched to one day.

The policy signals that Amazon is no longer willing to let FBM sellers set conservative delivery estimates as a buffer. The company says it will use Automated Handling Time to override settings that are more than one day longer than a seller's actual performance. Similar updates are being introduced in France, Spain, and Italy.

For brands managing high volumes across multiple European markets, these changes are a wake-up call to audit delivery data now rather than after enforcement begins. A 90% on-time rate may sound achievable, but sustained performance across markets, carriers, and SKU types requires visibility that many sellers don't yet have.

"This is Amazon telling FBM sellers to run their logistics with the same precision it expects from FBA. If your carrier performance data isn't already part of your weekly review process, it needs to be because September will arrive fast."

Mitchell Dröge
Alliance Manager

🚀 Galaxus overtakes Zalando to become Switzerland's largest online store

Swiss marketplace Galaxus ended 2025 as the biggest online store in Switzerland, reaching revenue of €2.5 billion and overtaking Zalando for the first time. The gap between the two is nearly €542 million. According to consultancy Carpathia, which tracks annual rankings of the largest online stores in the country, the top six positions are all held by marketplaces, a clear indicator of how dominant the model has become with Swiss shoppers.

Temu entered the Swiss top four with revenue of 1.08 billion euros, while Amazon came in fifth at 1.03 billion euros. Galaxus and Temu together added 1.03 billion euros in combined revenue compared to the prior year. Zalando's stagnation, meanwhile, reflects broader challenges the platform has faced in maintaining momentum outside its core markets.

The Swiss market is a useful signal for Europe more broadly: even in a relatively affluent, brand-loyal consumer environment, the marketplace model is consolidating fast, and domestic players with strong multi-category assortments can compete at the top.

"Galaxus winning in Switzerland is a real story. They've built a broad, well-operated marketplace that Swiss consumers trust. But the fact that Temu is already in the top four tells you something about how quickly the value-price proposition is reshaping European consumer behavior, even in premium markets."

Katharina Caracciolo
Senior Partner Management (DACH)

📺 MediaMarktSaturn bets big on marketplace growth and quietly drops its ecommerce targets

Ceconomy, the parent company of MediaMarkt and Saturn, has published its three-year strategy, and the marketplace numbers are ambitious: GMV is expected to grow from €800 million in the 2025/26 financial year to €1.9 billion by 2028/29, more than doubling in three years. Plans include a marketplace launch in Hungary by September 2026 and expansion into new categories including pet care, mobility, health & sports, and baby & kids.

There are no concrete ecommerce targets in the strategy presentation, a departure from previous years. The company anticipates losing some market share to Amazon and Temu, and expects total group revenue to grow only modestly from €23.2 billion to around €24 billion by 2028/29. Pending EU Commission approval, Ceconomy is also subject to a potential acquisition by JD.com.

For brands in electronics, home appliances, or adjacent categories, the marketplace GMV ambition is a direct expansion signal. More sellers, more SKUs, and new categories means both more opportunity and more competition on a platform that is actively trying to hold its ground against pure-play giants.

"Galaxus winning in Switzerland is a real story. They've built a broad, well-operated marketplace that Swiss consumers trust. But the fact that Temu is already in the top four tells you something about how quickly the value-price proposition is reshaping European consumer behavior, even in premium markets."

Katharina Caracciolo
Senior Partner Management (DACH)

❌ Rakuten France is shutting down and the sale process is now disputed

After 16 years in France, Rakuten is closing its marketplace by the end of 2026. The platform, originally acquired as PriceMinister in 2010 for 200 million euros, had seen active customers drop by 33% and traffic fall 42% since 2016.

Despite an announced sales process in May, none of the interested parties, including Cdiscount's parent company Casino, Carrefour, Back Market, and Pixmania, led to a viable deal. The closure also affects Spain, which is operated from the same structure. Sellers relying on Rakuten France need to act now to migrate their assortments to channels with stronger consumer traction.

"If you're selling on Rakuten France or Spain, the priority right now is getting your product data, pricing, and content ready to activate on alternative channels. Don't wait for an official closing date. The sellers who move first will secure better visibility on these platforms before the rest of the Rakuten base arrives looking for the same positions." 

Hugo Denoyelle
Senior Sales Lead France

📈 German ecommerce grows 4.3% in H1 2026 but Asian platforms are capturing the growth

Online retail in Germany grew 4.3% in the first half of 2026, with Q2 accelerating to 5.1%, according to industry association bevh. Marketplaces were the strongest-performing business model, generating €11.5 billion in turnover by mid-year, up 6.4%. The categories driving growth include everyday goods (up 10.1%), DIY and seasonal products (up 10.9%), and mail-order pharmacies (up 13.9%).

The standout story inside that growth is Asian platforms. Temu, Shein, and AliExpress now account for 5.3% of all online orders in Germany, with revenues up 20%, three times faster than the overall market. In fashion their share reaches 16% of all orders. The German Retail Federation's Online Monitor 2026 adds more texture to those numbers: Shein and Temu alone generated €4.7 billion in German sales, up from €3 billion in 2024. Crucially, buyer numbers rose only modestly — from 14.4 to 16 million. The 57% revenue jump came almost entirely from average order value climbing from €24.95 to €34.15. Existing customers are committing larger baskets, not just more customers trying the platforms for the first time.

The pattern is more advanced in Austria, where Chinese marketplaces already account for 10.6% of all ecommerce spending — roughly double Germany's current share. Switzerland shows the same direction but at a slower pace, partly due to the strength of Digitec Galaxus and its position outside the EU customs union. A new parcel tax on imports is unlikely to slow any of this down: these platforms are already shipping in containers to European distribution hubs, bypassing per-parcel duties entirely.

"The German market is growing, but the composition of that growth is what matters. Asian platforms aren't just winning on price anymore. Rising order values show they're winning on habit and trust too. For European brands, the window to differentiate on service quality, reliability, and brand relevance is narrowing faster than the headline numbers suggest."

Caroline Chergui
Manager of Sales

🤖 Zalando invests in AI robotics to automate returns processing

Zalando has made a strategic investment in Sereact, a Stuttgart-based robotics company that develops AI-powered warehouse automation systems. The investment contributes to a Series B round that has now grown to $116 million. Sereact's core product, the Cortex platform, learns from real operational data to control multiple robot systems and can handle tasks like object recognition, precise grasping, and automated restocking.

The investment is specifically aimed at the returns challenge. Zalando processes large volumes of returned fashion items, a process that is largely manual because each product must be inspected, reprocessed, and restocked. Sereact's systems are designed to automate that workflow at scale. The timing is connected to Zalando's expansion plans, including an expected launch in Bulgaria this summer, which add logistical complexity and return volumes.

For the broader industry, this is a signal that the largest European marketplaces are now actively investing in physical infrastructure to protect margin. Returns processing is a cost center that grows linearly with volume, and automation is the only viable path to keeping it under control at scale.

"Returns are one of the biggest margin destroyers in fashion ecommerce, and no one has cracked it at scale yet. Zalando backing Sereact is a serious bet that physical AI can change that. What's interesting is the signal it sends to brands: the platforms are automating around you, and the brands who don't control their own returns processes will feel the cost pressure first."

Mitchell Dröge
Alliance Manager

📈 UK online retail surges, highest online share since April 2021

Online retail in the United Kingdom is growing strongly. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), online retail sales values were 11.7% higher in Q2 2026 than the year before, with June alone posting a 14.4% year-on-year increase. The online share of total retail sales hit 29.4% in June, the highest level since April 2021 when pandemic restrictions were still affecting shopping behavior.

The ONS credits sales promotions and warm weather as drivers, with outdoor products, sports merchandise, fans, and air conditioners performing particularly well in June. Amazon remains the dominant player, with local revenue growing 14.2% to $43.2 billion (roughly £32 billion) last year. The broader context is a market that spent several years declining from its pandemic peak and is now genuinely back in growth.

For brands with a UK marketplace presence, the combination of recovering consumer confidence, a high Amazon concentration, and renewed double-digit growth creates a favorable moment to invest in channel optimization. Sellers who sat out the UK slowdown now have a strong reason to re-engage.

"The UK market has had a rough few years since the pandemic peak. What we're seeing now is a genuine recovery, not just base effects. For international brands that de-prioritized UK marketplace investment, this is the data point that should prompt a reassessment."

Gareth Lloyd-Jones
Sales Lead (UK) 

💳 Amazon and PayPal launch installment payments in Germany and Austria

Amazon customers in Germany and Austria will be able to pay for purchases in monthly installments via PayPal starting in August 2026. The new payment option — PayPal Ratenzahlung — allows purchases between 30 and 10,000 euros to be split across 3, 6, 12, or 24 months. For Amazon customers specifically, terms of 36 and 48 months are also available for higher-value purchases. Payments are automatically debited, and customers can repay early at no cost. The annual interest rate is 11.49%.

PayPal claims 40 million users in Germany and Austria, giving the integration immediate scale. The option will roll out gradually and requires a credit check from PayPal. Buy now, pay later has been growing across European ecommerce for several years, but its introduction directly within the Amazon checkout is a meaningful step for categories where purchase hesitation tracks to price.

For sellers on Amazon.de with higher-priced products, as electronics, furniture, appliances, outdoor equipment, this could meaningfully increase conversion in categories where customers have historically compared financing options across channels. It's worth tracking whether checkout conversion improves once the rollout completes.

"Embedding installment payment inside the Amazon checkout removes one of the last reasons a customer might leave to shop elsewhere. For high-ticket categories, this is a genuine conversion lever, and sellers in those segments should expect it to affect their numbers."

Eric Blauberger
Account Executive (EMEA)

🎯 Target expands its curated marketplace with Forever 21, Clarks, and K-beauty brands

Target has expanded its invite-only Target Plus marketplace with the addition of Forever 21, Clarks, JanSport, Hisense, JLab, and a range of beauty brands including LovelySkin. The expansion is deliberate and data-driven: Target noticed Korean beauty was gaining momentum with its customer base and used the marketplace to extend its K-beauty assortment quickly. Target Plus brands now account for over half of all K-beauty products available on the platform.

Unlike Amazon's open third-party marketplace, Target Plus is curated and invite-only, with sellers vetted through an AI-assisted review process. The retailer launched it in 2019 with the explicit goal of being a more intentional alternative to the open-marketplace model. New AI agents now help analyze seller applications by pulling publicly available information to assess whether a vendor is the right fit for Target's shopper base.

For brands looking to reach US mass-market consumers through a premium-positioned retail channel, Target Plus represents a different kind of marketplace opportunity than Amazon or Walmart. The curation model means lower seller density but higher selectivity, and the K-beauty expansion shows the platform is actively looking to fill trending category gaps.

"Target Plus is an interesting counterpoint to the everything-everywhere marketplace model. The invite-only approach means you're not just listed, you're selected. For brands that fit the consumer profile, that selectivity is a feature, not a barrier. The K-beauty move shows they're watching trends closely and filling gaps fast."

Damian Speck
Channel Partnerships Manager (North America)

⚡ Success story: How Trust made Amazon Vendor growth scalable with ChannelEngine

Consumer electronics brand Trust International manages an active Amazon catalog of 440 products across 10 European markets, introducing around 100 new products annually. As their vendor presence grew, so did the manual burden of managing product data, listings, content quality, and dispute management across markets. Belgium, Poland, Sweden, and Ireland were being added to their setup — but each new market meant more manual reformatting, more copy-pasting, and more room for error.

With ChannelEngine's Amazon Vendor add-on, Trust connected their PIM system directly to the platform so that product data mappings could be reused across markets rather than rebuilt from scratch. The result: listing time cut by up to 50%, with 85% of product data prefilled for core markets. The team saves 12 hours a week across listing workflows and vendor recovery management — time that is now going into content optimization, A/B testing, and expansion market setup. Dispute management, previously handled manually through Vendor Central, has also improved in both success rate and operational efficiency.

The Trust story illustrates a principle that applies to any brand scaling a vendor operation: the operational foundation has to scale with ambition. Manual processes don't break all at once — they slow everything down, create quality gaps, and quietly limit what the team can accomplish.

Read the full success story →