Private companies valued at over $1 billion and called unicorns flourished in 2021, doubling in number globally. The U.S. is home to most of those companies, but China has some of the most highly valued. In 2021, 519 new unicorns emerged, bringing the total number worldwide to over 1,000 at the beginning of 2022.

Unicorns were rare until eight years ago. Before that, startups would take their companies public to raise capital to grow after two or three rounds of venture capital funding.

Now more sources of funding are available. Private equity firms have historically invested in mature companies but lately are willing to fund early-stage startups. Today it is not uncommon for companies to have five or six private funding rounds, permitting them to reach billion-dollar valuations without going public.

According to CB Insights, there are more than 1,150 unicorns worldwide, as of June 2022. Forty-seven countries have at least one unicorn. The U.S., China, and India are leading with 612, 174, and 65, respectively. In Europe, the U.K., Germany, and France lead with 43, 29, and 24. The four cities with the most unicorns are in the U.S. and China.

The most valuable global unicorn at the beginning of 2022 was ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok and several other platforms in various industries. Its valuation then was $140 billion.

The top 10 unicorns have a combined valuation total of $698 billion at the end of last year.

At the end of 2021, there were 157 fintech unicorns, with 81 located in the U.S., according to Statista. China came in second with 11. CB Insights reports that fintech unicorns lead in valuations with a combined value of $926 billion.

In 2021, unicorn companies in the U.S. took in $142.3 billion in new funding, more than double the previous allotment. In the first quarter of 2022, 75 companies achieved unicorn status, according to PitchBook.

Unicorns in the U.S. raised $27 billion in 134 deals in Q1 2022. Of the top 10 new American unicorns in that quarter, 60% were fintech, and five of those six were associated with blockchain or cryptocurrency.

The public market determines the valuations of publicly traded companies. Conversely, the valuations of private firms are dictated mainly by investors interested in creating a high value, often without compelling data to back it up.

Private companies do not have to disclose detailed financial and operational information, that’s why their status is often opaque. Unicorns attract media attention, which can inflate or deflate valuations, depending on the publicity.

For example, the blood-testing company Theranos, valued at over $9 billion at its peak around 2013, plunged to $800 million a few days after published reports revealed the product did not work and revenue was relatively modest. The company shut down at the end of 2018, and founder Elizabeth Holmes’ net worth reportedly dropped from $4.5 billion to nothing. The company eventually sold its patents and intellectual property for only $65 million. Investors lost all their money.

So the tendency is that unicorns will likely continue making spectacular entrances, but valuations can be fleeting.

Nike Inc. said it’s leaving the Russian market entirely after suspending operations in March. It joins other United States-based companies that have pulled out since Russia invaded Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.

The world’s largest athletic-wear maker halted sales in Russia earlier this year, telling customers it couldn’t guarantee product shipments. The Beaverton, Oregon-based company had more than 100 stores in Russia. It’s a priority for the company to ensure they are fully supporting their employees while they responsibly scale down their operations over the coming months, the company said in a statement June 23.

Hundreds of multinational businesses across industries have curtailed or shut down their operations in Russia this year. U.S. companies including McDonald’s Corp., Starbucks Corp. and HP Inc. have all made full exits.

In May, Nike said it wouldn’t renew an agreement with its biggest Russian retail franchisee, which managed dozens of Nike stores. It also said it would not make any new business commitments.

Less than 1% of Nike’s total sales come from Russia and Ukraine, Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said in March. Revenue from its Europe, the Middle East and Africa region accounted for $11.5 billion in 2021. That’s about 26% of total sales.

Small businesses are becoming big users of B2B marketplaces, says new research from a business trade group.

The study, conducted in April by the Connected Commerce Council in Washington, D.C., found that:

64% of small businesses that use one or multiple online marketplaces do so to bring new products to market.

59% of small sellers also use marketplaces to access new markets, reduce inventory and warehousing costs.

Smaller sellers also report those online marketplaces give them the ability to scale fast (47%) and lower barriers to connecting with new customers (46%).

“We found that small and medium size sellers (SMBs) that use multiple sales channels value online tools and marketplaces highly,” says the Connected Commerce Council. “SMBs frequently sell using more than one marketplace.”

Most small businesses say they use Amazon Business more than other B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplaces, the report found. Specifically, 83% of SMBs use Amazon, followed by eBay (59%), Walmart Marketplace (36%), Etsy (30%), and Target Plus (20%). Small sellers also reported using other marketplaces such as Poshmark, Houzz, ASOS, Mercari, OfferUp, Newegg, and Discogs.

Other findings include:

• The two most popular online selling channels for SMB Sellers are business-owned ecommerce sites (59%) and online marketplaces (58%).
• 75% of SMB sellers who are using online marketplaces, use more than one of them.
• 82% of small sellers that sell on the Amazon.com marketplace also use at least one additional online marketplace.
• 83% of SMBs selling on online marketplaces use at least one “integrated tool” that helps with business operations like fulfillment, storage, and invoicing.

SMB sellers tend to sell in as many places as they can connect with buyers, with the typical seller using five sales channels, both online and offline, according to the Connected Commerce Council. Additional ‘integrated tools’ offered by online marketplaces are incredibly popular and deliver real value to sellers in the form of simplification and cost savings.

Wednesday June 08 – Thursday June 09
Taets Art and Event Park, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

DELIVER is a popular ecommerce and logistics event bringing together important decision makers and famous brands of the retail, ecommerce and logistics industry. There will be 30 talk sessions, 3,500 one-to-one meetings on 4,500 square meters of meeting area. About 1,500 retail leaders and 120 vendors from 40 countries are expected.

This two-day event has been created with a focus to unite the ecommerce and logistics elite and to provide a platform where global key players can discuss, build relationships and sign contracts. Founded in 2015, DELIVER aggregates thousands of decision makers to accelerate business connections and build meaningful conversations.

Attendees will profit from valuable breakout sessions, listen to presentations by global thought leaders and unwind afterwards at an exclusive networking dinner. “At DELIVER we focus on logistics and transport vendors, service providers and leading brands/retailers only. Our aim is to bring together the crème de la crème from both sides, so that they can meet for two full days to discuss and sign contracts. Our priority is to gather relevant key players. In order to ensure this, selected retailers and brands will be issued a VIP invite only once they have met specific criteria”, the organization explains.

DELIVER 2022 is based on a networking concept of prearranged 1 to 1 meetings, engaging breakout sessions and informative presentations by global thought leaders. “Over the last years we have continued to optimize our concepts that have proven success, such as our unequalled meeting structure allowing retailers to use our own matchmaking platform to find peers they believe could enhance their way of doing business through active discussion and exchanges which could ultimately lead to prosperous reciprocal relationships. Retailers can request an invitation online and vendors can contact our sales team at sales@deliver.events to apply for a sponsorship request.”

As the official site of the event goes, “We’re Europe’s biggest marketplace in e-commerce – but we haven’t forgotten what’s important. We’re actively committed to the core values that make our community so special.

The company said its Biometric Checkout Program would let a shopper scan their face using a retailer’s smartphone app and assign their likeness to a bank card stored on file. The technology is comparable to how Apple Inc.’s iPhone uses FaceID to approve payments or unlock a device. A pilot program began this week inside supermarkets in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Mastercard Inc. has begun to trial a biometric payment system for brick-and-mortar stores, using facial recognition rather than contactless cards, smartphones or memorable PINs.

According to Mastercard Cyber & Intelligence President Ajay Bhalla, when the pandemic happened, the company saw that everybody went digital and consumers all over the world embraced new technologies asking Mastercard for that for shopping, for their retail experiences.

A pilot program began this week inside five St. Marche supermarkets in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mastercard said in a statement. The stores will use an app that Brazilian startup Payface developed. It’s one of the small businesses Mastercard promotes as part of its Start Path engagement program.

On the hardware side, Mastercard is working with companies including NEC Corp. and Fujitsu General Ltd. It has plans to roll out internationally soon.

Mastercard team are really looking forward to bringing this solution everywhere. The Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America are in the nearest plans with even more features. Age verification for purchasing restricted store items is one that the company is beginning to explore and that they are really excited about.

Facial recognition is just one of many technologies that retailers, banks and payments firms use to try to eliminate cash and reduce fraud.

Amazon.com Inc. has a system that uses in-store cameras to track what shoppers put in a basket. It charges them on exiting its physical stores in the United States and United Kingdom. It won interest from Britain’s J Sainsbury Plc., which installed it at a trial store. Starbucks Corp. has a café in New York using it, too.

Eurora, which offers compliance solutions for cross-border ecommerce businesses, has raised 40 million dollars (37.94 million euros) in a Series A round. The capital injection will be used to accelerate the Estonian company’s international expansion.

Estonian company Eurora uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically manage cross-border VAT, compliance and customs services for customers. Its b2b platform is used by online sellers, marketplaces, logistics providers, as well as tax and customs authorities. According to the company, it serves over 200 clients worldwide.

As of July last year, the VAT rules within the EU changed. The previous 22 euros import VAT exemption ended, while regulations to create a level playing field with local European manufacturers and manufacturers worldwide came into effect. Cross-border sellers from the UK, the US and China have had to adjust to these new rules.

Eurora’s software simplifies VAT, compliance and customs for these cross-border sellers. The platform is claimed to have a 96 percent accuracy for parcels and handles 5.000 requests per second. It automatically calculates the applicable VAT and duty amounts. At the same time, it also creates electronic declarations for EU duties and taxes with an API integration.

In July 2021, Eurora raised 2.5 million euros, which allowed the company to expand the coverage of its customs compliance tools across 193 countries. Just 9 months later, the company held a Series A round led by Connected Capital. Existing investors such as Change Ventures, Equity United and founder Marko Lasik participated in the round that raised almost 38 million euros.

The software provider will use the capital injection to expand geographically into the UK, the US and the Middle East. Its current team of 150 people is expected to double by the end of this year. The company also wants to boost product development and add-on acquisitions.

Leading ecommerce platform Shopify has acquired Dovetale, an influencer marketing startup from New York, ecommercenews.eu reports. It is part of Shopify’s move into the influencer market. Creator marketing is on the rise in Europe, one of the software platform’s biggest growth markets.

Dovetale helps companies manage their influencer marketing campaigns. The platform connects businesses and social media influencers, making it easier to partner with influencers and track the brand’s sales. In 2021, the startup grew its revenue with 100 percent month-on-month.

The price of the takeover was not disclosed. Dovetale shared the news in its blog post, announcing it will continue under the name ‘Dovetale by Shopify’. However, Dovetale’s users will experience ‘minimal changes’, according to the startup. Moreover, Dovetale will be free to use for all Shopify users. The service used to cost over 90 euros per month.

“We really see creators as the next generation of entrepreneurs,” Shopify’s Director of Product Amir Kabbara told ModernRetail. “It is a top priority for us to really help these creators enter commerce and start monetizing.”

The acquisition is part of Shopify’s move into the influencer market. In 2020, Dovetale already created a Shopify app for influencer campaigns. And only last month, Shopify launched their own Linkpop-tool for influencers to provide links to their numerous projects.

While most of Shopify’s customers are from the United States, the European customer base has been growing rapidly. Shopify users in the United Kingdom (UK) and France have increased over 200 and 300 percent respectively over the last two years.

Meanwhile, the European influencer market is also on the rise. Influencer platform LTK experienced a growth spurt in Europe, their managing director told Econsultancy. European brands invested double the amount in creator partnerships in 2021. And in the UK, Shopify’s largest market after the United States, creator sales increased 45 percent.

Cross-border ecommerce in Europe was worth 171.2 billion euros in 2021. This is a growth of 17 percent when compared to the year before.

Cross-border ecommerce in Europe has grown significantly. Last year was the first time that European sellers were able to generate a cross-border revenue of 100 billion euros. When compared to 2020, this is year-on-year growth of 14.6 percent (87.2 billion euros). This is evident from Cross-Border Commerce Europe’s latest study.

UK no longer the biggest cross-border seller in Europe

The amount of cross-border sales originating from the UK has decreased by 12 percent, resulting in a revenue of 29 billion euros. In 2020, the cross-border sales generated a total of 33 billion euros. As a result, the UK is no longer the biggest cross-border seller in Europe. Germany has taken its place as the number one.

Increase in brand manufacturers in the top 500

Together, the top 500 biggest cross-border sellers in Europe generated 58.3 billion euros in turnover. The amount of brand manufacturers that sell through D2C-channels increased by 50 percent. Pure players, including marketplaces, hold 47 percent of the top 500.

The category fashion, jewelry and baby is still the largest category in the top 500, with a share of 41 percent.

Home, garden and DIY increased its share by 15 percent thanks to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The category personal care increased by 100 per cent.

The biggest 500 cross-border sellers had 1.4 million monthly visitors in total in 2021. When compared to the year before, this is an increase of 40 percent. Cross-Border Commerce Europe expects that this growth will continue in the years to come, according to ecommercenews.eu.

Top 10 cross-border sellers in Europe

The top 10 cross-border sellers in Europe are:

The top 10 generated 20.9 percent of the top 500’s revenue. In first place is Ikea, with a cross-border revenue of 5.5 billion euros. This is an increase of 8 percent when compared to 2020. Zalando, Lidl, About You, Jysk, Zara, Bauhaus and Euronics have entered the top 10 for the first time.

Bloomberg News

Apple Inc. is working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, a move that could make device ownership similar to paying a monthly app fee.

The service would be Apple’s biggest push yet into automatically recurring sales, allowing users to subscribe to hardware for the first time — rather than just digital services. But the project is still in development.

A push into hardware subscriptions, akin to an auto-leasing program, would be a major strategy shift for a company that has generally sold devices at full cost outright, sometimes through installments or with carrier subsidies. It could help Apple generate more revenue and make it easier for consumers to stomach spending thousands of dollars on new devices.

Already, the iPhone is Apple’s biggest source of sales, generating nearly $192 billion last year, it’s more than half the company’s revenue.

A spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment on the company’s plans.

The idea is to make the process of buying an iPhone or iPad on par with paying for iCloud storage or an Apple Music subscription each month. Apple is planning to let customers subscribe to hardware with the same Apple ID and App Store account they use to buy apps and subscribe to services today.

This program would differ from an installment program in that the monthly charge wouldn’t be the price of the device split across 12 or 24 months. Rather, it would be a yet-to-be-determined monthly fee that depends on which device the user chooses.

The company has discussed allowing users of the program to swap out their devices for new models when fresh hardware comes out. It historically releases new versions of its major devices, including the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, once a year.

Apple has been working on the subscription program for several months, but the project was recently delayed in an effort to launch a “buy now, pay later” service faster. Nonetheless, the subscription service is still expected to launch at the end of 2022, but could be delayed into 2023 or end up getting canceled, the people said.

Bloomberg reported last year that the company has been working on a “buy now, pay later” service for all Apple Pay transactions.

The company has had preliminary discussions internally about attaching the hardware subscription program to its Apple One bundles and AppleCare technical support plans. Apple launched the bundles in 2020 to let users subscribe to several services — including TV+, Arcade, Music, Fitness+ and iCloud storage — for a lower monthly fee.

The subscriptions would likely be managed through a user’s Apple account on their devices, through the App Store and on the company’s website. It would likely also be an option at checkout on Apple’s online store and at its physical retail locations. Apple accounts are typically tied to a user’s credit or debit card.

And Apple has offered several installment programs in the past to split up the cost of devices, though not with a subscription model.

In 2015, the company launched the iPhone Upgrade Program, financed through Citizens One Personal Loans, that lets users spread the cost of an iPhone over 24 months and upgrade to a new model every 12 months. It also lets Apple Card users divide the cost of an iPhone or Apple Watch over 24 months, or an iPad or Mac over 12 months. Wireless carriers offer several monthly installment programs as well.

The new approach could make existing services less appealing. A subscription program tied to an Apple account would likely be simpler to manage than a carrier program or even the installment plans for the Apple Card.

The iPhone maker wouldn’t be the first company to push hardware subscriptions. Peloton Interactive Inc. recently started testing a subscription service that lets consumers lease bikes and fitness content for between $60 and $100 per month. Google also has tried a similar approach with its Chromebook laptops, targeting corporate customers.

We are all used to working online with various devices and it is practical to have a digital tool to store and present identification and other documents.

The digital wallet was initially an app that allows for scanning physical cards and storing payment and other personal information on a device.

For instance, the iPhone is equipped with Apple Wallet, and Google has the Google Pay app which is compatible with both Android cell phones and iPhones.

Today’s digital wallets simply bind identity to the document presented for verification, such as an airline ticket. This is where identity proofing can be of utmost importance to make digital wallets more than just a convenient way to avoid flashing a paper document.

According to ecommercetimes.com, the digital wallet of the future is not about just storing the picture of a document, it’s also about ensuring that scanned documents are valid and provides assurances that it has been issued by a verified source. Therefore, identity proofing must be the cornerstone of any digital wallet.

Biometric support is a key requirement for digital wallets, including fingerprints, facial recognition and live selfies that require users to blink or make other movements to prevent stolen images from being used to hijack accounts and commit fraud.

Digital wallets need to verify and vet every attribute that’s associated with the user’s identity within the wallet, such as the name, address, and date of birth, so that when the user interacts with a service, they can selectively choose to present certain elements of their identity needed to complete a transaction.

The digital wallet should be able to store and encapsulate all identity attributes associated with an individual and present them on as-needed basis.

Security is another important characteristic of these new and improved digital wallets.

Apart from adopting security best practices to protect the data contained in a digital wallet, developers need to go through a series of certifications to assure consumers that the wallet is certified by one of the industry bodies that organizes identity authentication specifications, such as Fast ID Online (FIDO) or the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

A wallet should be attested and verified to comply with NIST identity assurance levels or the FIDO specifications of how signatures are validated and vetted.

Knowing that a wallet has been certified by a recognized standard body like FIDO or the Kantara Initiative gives consumers the assurance that the wallet they’re using complies with accepted security standards.

Digital wallets should also be compatible with one another. In an ideal world, one wallet should be able to meet all our needs, but the environment is still fragmented, as in the airline ticket example.

Developers need to work with organizations such as the Identity Foundation to ensure that all digital wallets are interoperable with each other. That way, they can give consumers a choice of using any wallet they want, as long as the identity documents that contain it can be shared and verified by other technology platforms.

Digital wallet technology is clearly the future for transacting business online and in the physical world, and for enabling users to take control of their privacy and the information they want to share with service providers.

The current single purpose digital wallet apps need to evolve to support multiple use cases and be interconnected with more than just one or a select group of companies.