Dubai, UAE - DELIVER Middle East, the region’s premier invitation-only event Powering the Future of Retail Supply Chains, has officially kicked off the countdown to its 2027 edition by unveiling its first wave of senior retail and supply chain speakers.

The announcement marks the next phase in the build-up to the event, giving confirmed and prospective attendees an early look at the world-class conference programme ahead of the launch of DELIVER’s signature 1-2-1 matchmaking platform.

Taking place on 20+21 January 2027 in Dubai, DELIVER Middle East will bring together the region’s most influential retail, supply chain and logistics leaders in a curated, fully hosted environment designed to foster meaningful commercial connections and strategic partnerships.

The programme features senior decision makers from leading retailers and brands across the Middle East and beyond, alongside influential voices from logistics, technology and supply chain innovation. Delegates will benefit from an inspiring conference programme exploring unified commerce, cross-border logistics, AI, automation, fulfilment innovation and the technologies transforming retail supply chains across the region.

Stéphane Tomczak, Founder and Chairman of DELIVER, commented:

“DELIVER Middle East exists to connect the region’s most influential retail and supply chain decision makers in a highly focused and efficient way. Our curated 1-2-1 meetings are at the heart of the experience, enabling meaningful, pre-qualified connections that drive real commercial outcomes. Combined with a world-class conference programme, this is where partnerships are built and business gets done.”

The event’s curated 1-2-1 matchmaking format remains DELIVER’s core differentiator, allowing retailers and brands to meet with carefully selected solution providers based on their business priorities and strategic objectives. Every meeting is pre-arranged, relevant and commercially focused, ensuring a high-value experience for all participants.

Attendance is strictly limited to maintain the quality of networking and meetings, bringing together senior-level retail and supply chain leaders, including C-suite executives, directors and regional decision makers, alongside a carefully selected group of innovative technology and logistics partners.

As momentum builds ahead of January 2027, additional speaker announcements and programme highlights will be revealed, with qualified retailers and brands encouraged to secure their invitations early to gain priority access to the matchmaking process when it goes live.

For more information, visit: https://www.deliver.events/middle-east

The post DELIVER Middle East Sets the Stage for its 2027 Dubai Edition appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Chinese low-value and e-commerce exports to the European Union fell by 65% year-on-year in August 2026, providing one of the clearest indications yet that Europe's new customs regime is fundamentally changing cross-border e-commerce flows. The decline follows the EU's introduction of a temporary €3 customs duty on low-value imports and comes after China-to-EU shipments had already fallen 54% year-on-year in July.

The figures, reported by The Loadstar and based on data from Trade and Transport Group, show how rapidly the economics of direct-to-consumer shipping from China are changing. For marketplaces and sellers that built their European operations around inexpensive individual parcels shipped directly from China, the removal of the EU's long-standing customs duty exemption for consignments below €150 has introduced a new cost into a business model heavily dependent on extremely low prices and enormous shipment volumes.

Chinese e-commerce shipments to Europe fall sharply

According to Trade and Transport Group managing director Frederic Horst, Chinese low-value and e-commerce exports to the EU dropped 65% year-on-year in August. The contraction accelerated from the already substantial 54% decline recorded in July, suggesting that the disruption is becoming more pronounced rather than representing a temporary adjustment immediately following the introduction of the new rules.

Separate data from Aevean points in the same direction. Its latest figures indicate that China's overall e-commerce exports fell approximately 16% year-on-year in August, the largest decline recorded so far. Europe was the main contributor to that contraction, with Chinese e-commerce exports to the region falling approximately 40%.

The discrepancy between the 40% and 65% figures reflects differences in datasets and measurement methodologies, but both show an exceptionally sharp deterioration in China-Europe e-commerce traffic. Other regions experienced much smaller reductions, while Africa was an important exception, with Chinese e-commerce exports reportedly increasing 71% from a comparatively small base.

The EU's €3 customs duty changes the economics of cheap parcels

The turning point came on 1 July 2026, when the European Union abolished the customs duty exemption previously available for consignments valued at €150 or less. A temporary flat customs duty of €3 now applies to qualifying low-value imported goods and is scheduled to remain in place until July 2028, when the EU expects its broader customs reform and Customs Data Hub to become operational.

Although frequently described as a €3 "parcel tax", the mechanism is more nuanced. The duty is calculated according to the different categories of goods contained within a shipment and their tariff classification. A parcel containing several products belonging to the same relevant category may therefore attract €3, while a shipment containing products falling under several different tariff classifications can generate multiple €3 charges.

For ultra-low-cost e-commerce, even a relatively small absolute charge can substantially change the economics of a transaction. The impact is particularly significant for products costing only a few euros, where customs costs represent a much larger percentage of the total purchase price. This directly challenges the economics that helped Chinese marketplaces build enormous European businesses around inexpensive products shipped individually to consumers.

Europe processed 5.9 billion low-value e-commerce items in 2025

The EU's decision follows years of extraordinary growth in direct e-commerce imports. According to the European Commission, approximately 5.9 billion low-value e-commerce items entered the European Union during 2025, around four times the volume recorded in 2022.

European authorities argued that the previous €150 customs exemption had become increasingly unsuitable for an e-commerce market handling billions of individual items. The Commission has also raised concerns about undervaluation, customs fraud, product safety and the competitive difference between European retailers importing merchandise commercially and overseas sellers sending products directly to individual customers.

The temporary €3 duty therefore represents only one component of a much broader overhaul of European customs rules. From November 2026, additional Product Identifier requirements are also scheduled to become mandatory for relevant import distance sales, giving customs authorities more information to identify products and detect potentially unsafe or non-compliant goods.

Temu, Shein and AliExpress face a changing European market

The change is particularly important for Chinese marketplaces such as Temu, Shein and AliExpress, whose international expansion has been closely associated with direct cross-border fulfillment. Trade and Transport Group previously estimated that China accounts for more than 80% of global cross-border e-commerce revenue, with Temu, Shein and AliExpress responsible for the overwhelming majority of Chinese e-commerce exports.

Direct fulfillment from China offered several advantages. Sellers could maintain centralized inventory, avoid duplicating stock across European markets and offer enormous product catalogues without placing every SKU in regional warehouses. Air freight and highly optimized parcel networks then connected Chinese suppliers directly with European consumers.

Europe's new customs environment weakens some of those advantages. The alternative is increasingly to move products into Europe in bulk, clear them through customs before individual orders are placed and fulfill purchases domestically or regionally. This does not eliminate customs costs, but it changes how those costs, inventory and compliance obligations are managed.

Chinese marketplaces could accelerate European warehousing

The decline in direct parcel traffic does not necessarily mean European demand for Chinese products will disappear. Instead, the regulatory changes could accelerate a transition already underway: moving inventory closer to European consumers.

Chinese marketplaces have increasingly experimented with local seller programs, European warehouses and hybrid fulfillment structures. Under this model, products can be imported in larger commercial shipments, stored within the EU and subsequently delivered as domestic or intra-European orders.

This would represent a fundamental change to the logistics architecture behind Chinese cross-border e-commerce. The competitive battleground would move partially away from ultra-cheap China-to-consumer parcel delivery toward inventory positioning, European fulfillment capacity, last-mile delivery and increasingly sophisticated demand forecasting.

For European fulfillment companies and logistics providers, that transition could create significant opportunities. Marketplace volumes that previously moved directly through airports and postal or parcel networks may increasingly require warehousing, pick-and-pack operations, returns processing and domestic delivery inside Europe.

European retailers are already reporting an impact

There are also early signs that European retailers may be benefiting from the changes. Polish fashion group LPP, owner of the Sinsay brand, has linked stronger online growth to the EU's new treatment of low-value imports. Sinsay's online sales reportedly began growing between 20% and 30% from mid-August, with the company pointing to the new import regime as one factor affecting competition from Chinese platforms.

Polish marketplace Allegro has similarly cited reduced competitive pressure from Chinese sellers among the factors supporting stronger domestic performance. The company recently increased its 2026 outlook, including raising its expected Polish gross merchandise value growth to between 11% and 13%.

The situation remains complex, however. Chinese marketplaces are unlikely to simply withdraw from Europe. Their scale, supplier networks, technology and ability to modify logistics models mean that the current decline in direct shipments could eventually be followed by a different type of expansion based on localized inventory and European fulfillment.

Air cargo could be one of the biggest losers

The consequences extend far beyond marketplaces and retailers. Cross-border e-commerce has become an important source of global air cargo demand, particularly on routes connecting China with Europe and North America.

Trade and Transport Group estimated earlier this year that cross-border e-commerce represented almost 18% of intercontinental air cargo traffic in 2025 despite accounting for only around 6% of global online sales. The disproportionate impact reflects the industry's reliance on air transport to deliver inexpensive Chinese products to international consumers within competitive delivery windows.

A sustained reduction in direct China-to-Europe parcel traffic could therefore affect freighter demand, airport volumes and airfreight capacity allocation. Major European cargo gateways that developed significant e-commerce operations over the past decade could be particularly exposed to changes in the direct parcel model.

The industry is already adapting. Senior executives from logistics companies including DSV and DHL have highlighted the need for greater flexibility as regulation, geopolitical disruptions and changing e-commerce patterns repeatedly alter global cargo flows. Rather than assuming that established gateways and routes will continue handling the same volumes, logistics companies are increasingly building networks capable of shifting capacity between markets.

The UK is proving more resilient

The European picture is also not uniform. Chinese e-commerce exports to the United Kingdom declined considerably less than shipments into the EU, according to Trade and Transport Group data.

Volumes to the UK fell approximately 13% year-on-year in August after declining only 5% in July. While still negative, the figures are substantially less dramatic than the 54% and 65% declines recorded for the European Union during the same months.

The divergence provides another indication that regulation is playing an important role in changing shipment patterns. The UK operates outside the EU customs system and is therefore not directly subject to the bloc's new €3 low-value import duty.

The US shows how quickly e-commerce flows can change

The United States provides another example of the ability of Chinese e-commerce networks to adapt to regulatory disruption. Direct low-value shipments from China to the US have reportedly been expanding again since May, although rolling 12-month volumes remain at only around 65% of the levels recorded before May 2025.

The pattern demonstrates how quickly cross-border e-commerce flows can be redirected or reorganized when governments change customs rules. Marketplaces can alter sourcing, consolidate shipments, move inventory into destination markets or develop alternative fulfillment structures.

Europe may now be entering a similar adjustment period.

What happens next to China-EU e-commerce?

The 65% decline in August should therefore not necessarily be interpreted as a 65% collapse in European consumer demand for Chinese products. It primarily measures a dramatic contraction in a particular cross-border logistics model: low-value products moving directly from China into the EU.

The distinction is critical. If Chinese marketplaces respond by moving more inventory into European warehouses, some of the lost direct airfreight volume could reappear as bulk freight, ocean shipments or alternative logistics flows. At the same time, local fulfillment would place Chinese marketplaces in more direct competition with European retailers on delivery speed, warehousing efficiency and returns management rather than primarily on cross-border parcel economics.

More regulatory changes are also approaching. The €3 duty is a transitional mechanism expected to operate until July 2028, after which the EU intends to apply normal customs tariffs through its reformed customs infrastructure. New product identification requirements and a planned handling fee will further increase the regulatory and operational requirements associated with selling low-value products into Europe.

A structural change in cross-border e-commerce

Two consecutive months of exceptionally steep declines provide the first substantial evidence that Europe's customs reforms are already influencing international e-commerce flows. A 54% year-on-year contraction in July followed by a 65% decline in August suggests that the impact extends beyond an initial period of implementation.

For Chinese marketplaces, the challenge will be preserving the price advantages that drove their European expansion while adapting to an environment where direct low-value imports no longer receive the same customs treatment. For European retailers, the rules could reduce part of the structural cost difference between locally stocked merchandise and individual products shipped directly from outside the EU.

For logistics companies, meanwhile, the transformation may be even more significant. The extraordinary growth of Chinese cross-border e-commerce helped reshape global air cargo during the first half of the decade. If Europe continues moving away from the direct-parcel model, the next phase of that transformation could increasingly take place inside European warehouses, fulfillment centers and domestic delivery networks.

The 65% decline is therefore more than an e-commerce sales indicator. It may be an early sign that one of the defining logistics models of global e-commerce is being rewritten.

The post China-to-EU E-commerce Shipments Plunge 65% as New Customs Rules Reshape Cross-Border Trade appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

A major strategic divide is emerging over the future of agentic commerce. Shopify is opening its merchant ecosystem to Meta’s new AI shopping agent, Muse, while Amazon has taken the opposite approach and blocked the same agent from shopping on Amazon.com. The contrast reveals two very different visions of how AI should interact with online retail. Shopify appears willing to let third-party agents become a new commerce channel, while Amazon is defending tighter control over its marketplace, customer experience and commercial infrastructure.

On one side, Shopify is working with Meta so Muse can help users discover products and complete purchases across Shopify-powered stores using Shop Pay. On the other, Amazon says Meta did not obtain permission for Muse to access its marketplace and has blocked the agent from shopping on behalf of customers. The dispute raises a wider question for the entire e-commerce industry: should AI agents be welcomed as a new layer of distribution and checkout, or treated as external intermediaries that could weaken retailer control over customers, data and monetization?

Shopify embraces Meta’s Muse as an AI commerce channel

Shopify has chosen the more open approach. The company is partnering with Meta to integrate Shop Pay agentic checkout into Muse, allowing the AI assistant to facilitate purchases from merchants operating on Shopify. Shopify had already started preparing for this shift earlier in September by adding Meta as an AI channel inside Shopify Admin. Merchants can manage whether product catalogs are shared with Meta, control direct checkout access and monitor performance from within Shopify’s agentic-commerce settings.

This is significant because Shopify is not merely allowing Muse to browse merchant websites. It is connecting Meta to structured commerce infrastructure, giving the AI cleaner access to product data, availability and checkout functionality. That reduces the need for the agent to interpret conventional websites designed for humans. Instead, Shopify can act as the commerce layer beneath the AI interface, providing the product and transaction infrastructure while Meta controls the consumer-facing experience.

Shop Pay becomes the transaction layer

The partnership also highlights the strategic value of Shop Pay. Muse users will be able to complete purchases through Shopify’s accelerated checkout infrastructure across participating stores. That means the customer may begin and remain inside Meta’s AI environment while the transaction itself still flows through Shopify’s commerce stack. For Shopify, the loss of the traditional storefront as the primary interface does not necessarily mean losing the economic value of the transaction.

This is a critical distinction in the emerging agentic-commerce model. Shopify does not primarily depend on consumers visiting Shopify.com, because its business is built around providing infrastructure to merchants wherever commerce happens. If discovery increasingly moves into AI assistants, Shopify can still capture value through product feeds, checkout, payments and merchant operations. Its strategy therefore appears less focused on protecting the storefront and more focused on becoming indispensable infrastructure underneath AI-driven commerce.

Amazon takes the opposite approach

Amazon has chosen a far more restrictive position. The company blocked Muse from shopping on Amazon.com after Meta reportedly declined Amazon’s request to exclude its marketplace from the agent’s shopping capabilities. Users attempting to shop on Amazon through Muse began seeing a message stating that continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violated Amazon’s Conditions of Use. Amazon says the issue centers on authorization, transparency and how third-party agents interact with its platform.

According to Amazon, Meta did not provide advance notice that Muse would shop on Amazon.com, the agent does not adequately identify itself while browsing, and the company has concerns around customer credentials and account access. Amazon argues that third-party applications making purchases on behalf of users should operate transparently and respect whether a service provider wants to participate. The company’s position is that consumer permission alone is not enough; the merchant platform should also be able to decide whether an external agent can access and transact through its systems.

Meta disputes the credential-risk concern

Meta has said Muse does not directly see users’ passwords or payment credentials. According to the company, credentials are stored securely and can be used by the AI without being exposed to the model itself. Muse operates inside a virtual machine and can use a browser to interact with services when a public API is not available. Meta also says the agent seeks confirmation before taking sensitive actions such as sending messages or completing purchases.

This difference in interpretation is central to the dispute. Meta views the consumer as authorizing the agent to act on their behalf, while Amazon argues that the platform being accessed also needs to consent. That tension could become one of the most important legal and commercial questions in agentic commerce. It effectively asks whether an AI agent should be treated like a user-controlled browser, an automated bot, a commercial intermediary, or something entirely new.

Amazon wants AI agents to identify themselves

Amazon’s position is also closely linked to transparency and identity. The company argues that an external AI agent entering customer accounts, browsing product pages and initiating transactions should clearly identify itself to the retailer. This reflects a broader issue emerging across e-commerce and payments: merchants increasingly want to know which agent is acting, who authorized it, what permissions it has, whether it is operating within those limits and who is responsible if something goes wrong.

These are no longer theoretical questions. Payment networks including Mastercard and Visa are already developing identification and authorization layers specifically for AI agents. Amazon is effectively applying the same logic at the marketplace level. If agentic commerce is to scale, retailers may demand a standardized way to recognize trusted agents, verify user intent and establish accountability before allowing automated systems to interact deeply with their commerce infrastructure.

Shopify sees AI agents as another distribution channel

Shopify’s strategy appears fundamentally different. Rather than requiring consumers to begin every transaction within a Shopify-controlled environment, the company is treating AI assistants as another sales and distribution channel. This resembles the way Shopify already connects merchants with Google, social networks, marketplaces, mobile commerce and point-of-sale systems. Agentic platforms now become another route through which merchants can reach potential customers.

That approach fits Shopify’s architecture particularly well. Its value lies in powering merchants across multiple channels rather than owning a single consumer destination. If an AI platform becomes the place where shoppers discover and compare products, Shopify can still remain the system handling structured catalog data, merchant operations, payments and checkout. In that model, losing control of the interface does not necessarily mean losing control of the transaction infrastructure.

Amazon has more to lose from external agents

Amazon’s incentives are very different because its marketplace is not simply a transaction engine. The company controls product discovery, search, advertising, reviews, recommendations, checkout, fulfillment and customer service inside one highly integrated environment. External AI agents could bypass several of those layers by searching, comparing and selecting products on behalf of users without presenting Amazon’s traditional marketplace interface.

This matters because Amazon has built a huge advertising business around product discovery. Sponsored placements, search positioning and marketplace visibility are all tied to shoppers navigating Amazon directly. If an AI agent evaluates products based mainly on price, reviews, availability and delivery terms, some of the commercial value of those interfaces could be reduced. Amazon therefore has more strategic incentive than Shopify to preserve control over how shoppers discover and select products.

The fight is about who controls product discovery

This is why the Shopify-Amazon split matters beyond Muse itself. Agentic commerce is changing where product discovery happens. Today, shoppers typically search, browse, compare products, open listings, add items to a cart and complete checkout. An AI agent could compress that process into a single instruction such as: “Find me the best stroller under €500, with strong reviews and delivery before Friday.”

The agent could then search across multiple merchants, evaluate the available options and complete the transaction according to the user’s preferences. If that behavior becomes common, the center of gravity in e-commerce may move away from individual marketplace interfaces and toward AI platforms. The strategic question then becomes less about who owns the product listing and more about who owns the interface between shopper and merchant.

Shopify is betting on infrastructure, Amazon on ecosystem control

The two companies are effectively making different bets on the next phase of e-commerce. Shopify is betting that infrastructure remains valuable even if another company controls the consumer interface. Its role can still include catalog data, merchant operations, payments, checkout and order management. Amazon appears more determined to preserve control over both the infrastructure and the customer-facing environment, including search, advertising, recommendations and transaction flow.

Neither position is necessarily permanent. Amazon could eventually negotiate access agreements with selected AI platforms, while Shopify could impose stricter controls if agentic commerce creates problems for merchants. But the current split exposes two competing models. One is open and infrastructure-led, while the other is more closed and ecosystem-driven. Those models could shape how retailers interact with AI agents over the next several years.

Amazon is already challenging other AI shopping agents

Muse is not the first AI shopping agent Amazon has opposed. The company has also attempted to restrict access by agents from Perplexity, Google and OpenAI. Its dispute with Perplexity has already moved into the courts, where Amazon initially secured a preliminary injunction before a US appeals court later rejected part of its argument under federal anti-hacking law. Contractual claims based on terms of service remain a separate issue.

That legal background helps explain the language Amazon is now using with Muse. The company is framing the dispute around authorization and contractual access rather than purely around cybersecurity. This suggests Amazon is trying to establish a broader principle: AI agents should not assume unrestricted access to its commercial environment simply because an individual user authorizes them to act.

Amazon itself uses agentic shopping technology

Amazon is not opposed to AI shopping agents in principle. The company has developed its own agentic-commerce capabilities, including Buy for Me, which can help customers purchase products from external merchant sites, and Alexa for Shopping, which can research products and provide recommendations. Amazon argues that the difference lies in transparency and merchant consent.

According to Amazon, Buy for Me identifies itself when interacting with external merchants and allows businesses to opt out. That distinction reinforces the company’s central argument: the problem is not autonomous shopping itself, but how external agents enter and use another company’s commerce environment. In other words, Amazon supports agentic commerce when the rules of access are negotiated and visible to all participants.

Muse is gaining traction quickly

The dispute matters partly because Muse is already attracting significant attention. Meta launched the personal AI agent on September 8, positioning it as a system capable of handling multi-step tasks including shopping, appointment booking, email management and other everyday activities. Shortly after launch, Muse climbed rapidly through Apple’s US App Store rankings, indicating strong early consumer interest.

Growing adoption increases the urgency for retailers and commerce platforms to decide how they want to interact with these agents. For Shopify merchants, Meta represents a potential new source of product discovery and checkout. For Amazon, Muse currently represents an unauthorized intermediary operating inside a commercial environment Amazon has spent decades building and monetizing.

Agentic commerce could disrupt e-commerce advertising

Advertising may become one of the areas most affected by this shift. Traditional marketplaces monetize shopper attention by selling visibility within search results and product pages. Retailers pay to move products higher in rankings or increase exposure across marketplace interfaces. AI agents may operate differently, especially if they prioritize objective criteria such as price, delivery speed, return policies and product specifications.

If consumers increasingly delegate purchasing decisions to agents, traditional sponsored placement could become less influential. An AI may not respond to the same visual hierarchy and advertising formats as a human shopper. That creates a potential challenge not only for Amazon but also for Google and other platforms whose commercial models depend heavily on monetizing search and product discovery.

Merchants face their own strategic decision

Retailers will also need to decide how open they want to be to AI agents. Participation could bring significant benefits by creating new channels for product discovery, customer acquisition, conversion and cross-border sales. At the same time, merchants may lose some control over brand presentation, customer relationships, upselling and the overall shopping journey.

A consumer who shops entirely through Muse may never see the merchant’s homepage, marketing funnel or carefully designed product pages. Competition could therefore shift toward machine-readable factors such as price, stock availability, delivery speed, product attributes and returns. That would change how retailers think about optimization and could make structured product data increasingly important.

Structured commerce data becomes more valuable

Shopify’s role demonstrates this shift clearly. When Shopify shares catalog data directly with Meta, Muse does not need to scrape and interpret every merchant website independently. Instead, the agent can access standardized commerce information such as product descriptions, variants, prices, stock levels and checkout capabilities.

That gives Shopify an important strategic position in the agentic ecosystem. The company already sits between merchants and numerous external sales channels, and AI assistants can become another distribution layer connected to that infrastructure. As more shopping moves through agents, the platforms controlling high-quality structured commerce data may become increasingly valuable.

The future could split into open and closed commerce ecosystems

The Shopify-Amazon divide may point toward a broader fragmentation of agentic commerce. Some platforms may operate as open commerce infrastructure, allowing multiple AI agents to access catalogs and transactions through standardized integrations. Others may remain more closed, allowing only approved agents or proprietary AI experiences to participate.

The result could resemble earlier battles over mobile operating systems, app stores and platform APIs. Retailers and marketplaces may have to choose between reach and control, while AI companies may need to negotiate access to the largest commerce ecosystems rather than assuming they can browse and transact freely.

A defining battle over the next e-commerce interface

The dispute between Shopify, Amazon and Meta ultimately comes down to control. Meta wants Muse to become an interface through which consumers can complete everyday tasks, including shopping. Shopify sees an opportunity to make its merchant ecosystem accessible through that interface. Amazon sees an external agent entering a shopping environment it has spent decades building, optimizing and monetizing.

All three positions are commercially rational, but they point toward very different futures for e-commerce. Shopify’s model says the consumer can shop anywhere while Shopify provides the infrastructure underneath. Amazon’s model says the shopping environment itself remains strategically important and should not be accessed by third-party agents without permission. As AI shopping agents become more capable, the next major battle in e-commerce may not be over assortment or delivery speed, but over which AI is allowed to stand between the shopper and the store.

The post Shopify Opens Its Stores to Meta’s Muse While Amazon Blocks the AI Shopping Agent appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Salesupply has expanded its international logistics network by opening a new fulfillment center and returns hub in Switzerland. Located in Embrach, in the canton of Zurich, the facility lets international e-commerce brands store inventory, fulfill domestic Swiss orders, and process returns without repeatedly moving goods across the Swiss-EU border.

The location is situated close to Zurich Airport and the surrounding customs infrastructure, positioning the facility to support both domestic distribution and international inventory flows. For Salesupply, Switzerland becomes the latest node in a fulfillment network that already covers multiple markets across Europe, North America, and other international regions.

The expansion is particularly relevant for cross-border merchants because Switzerland is not part of the European Union or the EU customs union. Consequently, an e-commerce shipment entering Switzerland from an EU member state is treated as an import and must comply with Swiss customs and VAT requirements.

Local fulfillment could simplify selling into Switzerland

For European online retailers, Switzerland represents an attractive but operationally distinct e-commerce market. Unlike shipments moving between EU member states, goods entering Switzerland are subject to customs procedures and potentially import VAT.

Switzerland currently applies a standard VAT rate of 8.1%, while certain categories of goods qualify for the reduced 2.6% rate. Import VAT can therefore become an important part of the customer experience when retailers sell into the country from warehouses located elsewhere in Europe.

Depending on the shipping and customs arrangement the merchant uses, customers may face additional charges for taxation, customs processing, or carrier handling when their parcel enters Switzerland. These additional steps can make the buying experience less predictable compared with a purely domestic transaction.

By placing inventory in Switzerland before fulfilling individual customer orders, merchants can ship subsequent orders domestically. Salesupply argues this can provide customers with clearer pricing while reducing the customs administration associated with individual cross-border parcels.

Salesupply targets the cost of cross-border returns

Returns are another area where the Swiss border can add complexity.

When a product originally shipped into Switzerland is subsequently returned to a warehouse in the European Union, the parcel crosses a customs border again. Depending on how the process is structured and documented, merchants can face customs-clearance requirements and additional administrative costs.

For categories with relatively high return rates, these costs can matter more. Fashion, footwear and consumer electronics retailers, for example, may need to manage substantial volumes of merchandise moving back through their supply chains.

Salesupply's new Swiss returns hub is intended to keep returned merchandise in the country. Products can be received and processed locally before the retailer decides whether they should be restocked, consolidated or otherwise handled.

The model effectively separates consumer returns from international inventory movement. Rather than sending every individual return back across the border, merchants can manage the return locally and potentially consolidate subsequent international movements.

Embrach facility supports domestic Swiss fulfillment

The new center in Embrach gives Salesupply customers the option to hold stock directly in Switzerland and fulfill orders through domestic delivery networks. For international brands, this approach can help create a customer experience that more closely resembles purchasing from a Swiss-based retailer. Inventory is already in the country, customer orders don't need to complete an individual import process, and returns can be directed to a domestic location.

Local inventory can also become more valuable as consumers expect shorter, more predictable delivery windows. Cross-border shipping can add variables, including customs processing, documentation requirements, and potential border delays. A Swiss fulfillment operation removes the international customs process from the final delivery leg once inventory has entered the country.

Swiss fulfillment can support marketplace sellers

The new operation may also be relevant to brands selling through Swiss marketplaces, particularly Digitec Galaxus.

Switzerland's largest e-commerce platforms place significant emphasis on product availability, delivery performance, and reliable after-sales processes. Sellers operating internationally therefore need logistics infrastructure that meets Swiss consumer expectations while complying with individual marketplace requirements.

Salesupply specifically highlighted Galaxus when announcing the new facility, noting that delivery speed, availability and returns infrastructure can influence marketplace operations. The company says that sellers on the platform require access to a Swiss returns address.

For brands entering Switzerland through marketplace channels, combining local inventory with a domestic returns operation can therefore provide both logistical and commercial advantages.

Instead of treating Switzerland simply as another European destination served from an EU warehouse, merchants can operate with a dedicated local logistics setup.

Switzerland remains a distinct cross-border e-commerce market

Switzerland represents an unusual opportunity for European e-commerce businesses. Geographically, it sits at the center of Western Europe and borders major EU economies including Germany, France, Italy and Austria. From a customs perspective, however, it remains a separate market.

This distinction means that fulfillment strategies commonly used across the European Union do not necessarily produce the same results in Switzerland. A retailer can, for example, serve customers in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and many other EU markets from a single European warehouse without customs declarations for every intra-EU consumer shipment. Sending the same product into Switzerland creates a formal import. That difference makes inventory positioning especially important.

Moving goods into Switzerland in larger inventory shipments and then fulfilling consumer orders domestically can shift customs processing from the individual customer transaction to the retailer's supply-chain operation. For companies generating sufficient Swiss order volumes, local fulfillment can therefore become increasingly attractive.

One integration across Salesupply's fulfillment network

Salesupply says the Swiss facility will operate using the same infrastructure as its other international fulfillment locations. Customers using multiple Salesupply warehouses can manage operations through a single IT integration and a real-time inventory dashboard. The company also monitors the network through its Fulfillment Control Tower, which oversees operations and identifies potential disruptions across fulfillment locations.

The objective is to allow existing Salesupply customers to add Switzerland to their fulfillment footprint without establishing an entirely separate logistics system.

For brands entering the country for the first time, the company says the service combines local inventory management, domestic order fulfillment, returns processing and support with Swiss VAT and customs operations.

Salesupply continues expanding its international fulfillment footprint

The launch in Switzerland is part of Salesupply's wider strategy to help online retailers position inventory closer to consumers in individual markets. The Dutch e-commerce service provider offers international fulfillment, customer service and returns solutions. According to the company, more than 500 online brands and retailers use its services, including Carhartt, Segway Ninebot and Panasonic.

Salesupply also provides customer service in more than 25 languages across three time zones and operates fulfillment infrastructure designed to help merchants expand internationally while delivering locally. The company is headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and operates across markets including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Poland, Spain, Italy, and the Nordic region.

Adding Switzerland gives Salesupply another strategically important European fulfillment location while addressing a key challenge of Swiss cross-border e-commerce: the customs border separating the country from the European Union. For retailers with meaningful sales volumes in Switzerland, local fulfillment could reduce customs interactions affecting individual customer orders while creating a more predictable domestic delivery and returns experience.

The post Salesupply opens fulfillment center and returns hub in Switzerland appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Is it cheaper—and ultimately more profitable—to employ someone working from home or sitting in an office? The answer is more complicated than simply comparing salaries or office rent. Profitability depends on at least four variables: how much an employee produces, how much it costs to provide their workplace, how likely they are to leave, and how effectively the company can recruit the people it needs.

A growing body of research from Stanford University, Harvard, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the OECD, Nature, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides enough data to start putting numbers behind the debate.

And the numbers vary enormously. In controlled studies, working from home has produced results ranging from an 18% productivity decline to a 13% productivity increase. A newer study found a 10% increase. Hybrid work, meanwhile, has produced essentially no measurable productivity penalty while reducing employee departures by 33%.

Perhaps the most commercially interesting finding arrived in 2026: researchers found that bringing fully remote employees into an office only one day per month generated enough productivity and retention improvements to produce an estimated benefit-cost ratio of approximately 5:1.

So which model actually makes more money?

Remote vs office work by the numbers

The research provides some strikingly different results depending on the type of work being performed.

These numbers immediately reveal something important. No universal productivity premium is associated with either the home or the office. The economic advantage depends heavily on the type of employee, the type of task, and how remote work is organized.

The famous Stanford experiment: home workers produced 13% more

One of the best-known experiments was conducted by Stanford researchers at Chinese travel company Ctrip. The company employed approximately 16,000 people and randomly assigned eligible call-center workers either to work from home or remain in the office for nine months. The home workers produced 13% more output.

That gain had two components. Around 9 percentage points came from employees working more minutes during their shifts because they took fewer breaks and sick days.

Another 4 percentage points came from employees processing more calls per minute, which researchers linked partly to the quieter home environment.

Employee turnover also fell by approximately 50%. Then something even more interesting happened. After the experiment, Ctrip allowed employees to choose whether they wanted to work from home or return to the office.

More than half changed their original working arrangement. Once employees had sorted themselves into the environment they preferred, the measured productivity advantage of homeworking increased from 13% to approximately 22%.

That suggests an important profitability factor companies sometimes overlook: The most productive workplace may not be the same for every employee.

Another experiment found remote productivity 10% higher

A newer NBER study published in 2025 examined a large call center in Turkey after it shifted to fully remote work. Researchers found that workforce productivity increased by 10%.

Remote employees completed calls faster, with the researchers again pointing to the quieter home environment as one explanation. But there was another economic advantage.

Going remote allowed the company to recruit from smaller towns, rural locations, and demographic groups with lower labor-force participation. As a result, the share of university graduates employed by the company increased by 14% without increasing wages.

From a profitability perspective, this is potentially as significant as the productivity result. Remote work did not merely change where existing employees performed their jobs. It changed the company's available labor market.

But another randomized experiment found home workers 18% less productive

The case for remote work becomes much less straightforward when looking at another randomized controlled trial. Researchers studying data-entry employees in Chennai, India randomly assigned workers to either home or office environments.

Employees working from home were 18% less productive. Approximately two-thirds of the productivity difference appeared immediately. The remainder developed over time because office workers learned faster.

Even more surprisingly, employees who actually preferred working from home experienced particularly large productivity losses when doing so. Workers who preferred WFH were about 27% less productive at home than in the office, compared with a 13% reduction among workers who preferred office work. This provides an important counterweight to the Ctrip findings.

Homeworking can produce a double-digit productivity gain in one workplace and a double-digit loss in another.

Another Fortune 500 study found an 8–12% remote productivity gap

Research published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics examined call-center operations at a Fortune 500 company. Before COVID-19, employees working remotely handled approximately 12% fewer calls per hour than employees based on site.

When office closures forced everyone to work remotely, part of the difference disappeared. However, an approximately 8% productivity difference remained between employees who had originally selected remote jobs and those originally hired into office positions.

The researchers concluded that savings from lower turnover and office rent could offset the direct productivity disadvantage of remote work—but not necessarily the cost of attracting less productive workers into remote positions.

This introduces yet another variable into the profitability equation:

Who applies for the job can matter almost as much as where the job is performed.

Hybrid working may solve much of the productivity problem

The clearest evidence in favor of hybrid work comes from another randomized controlled trial involving Trip.com. Researchers followed 1,612 engineers, marketing employees and finance professionals.

One group continued working in the office five days a week. The other worked from home two days a week and went to the office three. The result? There was no significant difference in performance ratings. Promotions did not decrease measurably.

Software engineers did not produce less code. Yet employee attrition dropped from 7.2% to 4.8%. That is a reduction of 2.4 percentage points, or approximately 33% relative to the office-only group. For profitability, that difference matters enormously.

What does a 33% reduction in turnover actually mean in money?

Trip.com estimated that replacing an employee cost around $20,000 in recruitment and training.

Consider a hypothetical company with 1,000 employees experiencing the same turnover rates found in the experiment.

Under the office model: 

• 7.2% × 1,000 = 72 departures

Under the hybrid model:

• 4.8% × 1,000 = 48 departures

Difference: 24 fewer employees leaving over six months

At $20,000 per replacement: 24 × $20,000 = $480,000

So the hybrid organization would save approximately:

• $480,000 per 1,000 employees over six months purely through lower recruitment and training costs.

A simple annualized extrapolation would be:

$960,000 per 1,000 employees per year

However, that annual figure should be treated as an illustrative extrapolation rather than a measured result because the experiment itself measured the relevant attrition difference over six months.

More importantly, this calculation includes zero office-space savings. It includes zero energy savings. It includes zero commuting effects.

And it assumes zero productivity advantage for hybrid employees. The economic gain comes almost entirely from retaining more workers.

Employees themselves value homeworking at approximately 5% of salary

Another large international NBER study covering workers in 27 countries provides a different way to quantify the value of remote work.

Researchers asked employees to place a monetary value on working from home.

On average, workers valued the ability to work from home two or three days per week at approximately 5% of their salary.

Consider an employee earning €50,000.

Five percent of their salary is:

• €2,500 per year

For someone earning €70,000:

• €3,500 per year

At €100,000:

• €5,000 per year

This does not mean employers can automatically cut salaries by 5%.

But economically, it means flexibility functions partly like a non-cash employment benefit.

For a company competing for workers, the ability to offer hybrid work can therefore carry considerable recruitment value without appearing on the salary line of the P&L.

Other Harvard-linked research also found that 21% of workers would accept a pay reduction greater than 10% in exchange for retaining the ability to work remotely, although the median teleworkable employee was not willing to sacrifice compensation.

Homeworking saves an average of 72 minutes per day

Time provides another measurable economic benefit.

Researchers examining workers in 27 countries calculated that employees save an average of 72 minutes every day they work from home by eliminating their commute.

But employees do not use all 72 minutes for leisure.

Approximately 40% of the saved commuting time is reallocated to work.

That equals:

72 × 40% = 28.8 minutes

of additional work-related time for every homeworking day.

For an employee working remotely two days per week:

28.8 × 2 = 57.6 additional minutes per week

Across 50 working weeks:

57.6 × 50 = 2,880 minutes

or approximately:

48 additional hours per year

That is roughly six eight-hour working days of time redirected towards work.

Again, this should not automatically be interpreted as six additional days of productive output. But it illustrates why commuting time is economically relevant when comparing home and office work.

The U.S. government data also points towards lower operating costs

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics examined the relationship between remote working and productivity across 61 private-sector industries.

Its findings are particularly useful because they consider not just labour productivity but the broader combination of inputs required to generate output.

After accounting for pre-pandemic productivity trends, a one-percentage-point increase in remote workers was associated with approximately 0.05 percentage points higher total-factor-productivity growth.

The cost effects were even more interesting.

Every one-percentage-point increase in remote working was associated with approximately:

–0.10 percentage points in unit labour-cost growth

–0.27 percentage points in unit capital-cost growth

–0.18 percentage points in unit energy-cost growth

–0.16 percentage points in unit materials-cost growth

–0.20 percentage points in unit services-cost growth

and approximately:

–0.38 percentage points in unit office-building-cost growth.

These are industry-level statistical associations rather than proof that each percentage point of remote working directly causes an equivalent cost reduction.

Nevertheless, the pattern is notable.

Industries where remote working expanded more tended to experience slower growth in multiple categories of business cost.

Offices can cost thousands per employee per year

Real-world property data helps put the office component into perspective.

The UK Crown Prosecution Service reported £33.1 million in annual estate running costs in its 2025–26 property plan.

The organization had approximately 7,240 full-time-equivalent employees and 3,900 workstations.

That equates to roughly:

£4,572 in annual property running costs per employee

while providing only:

0.54 physical workstations per employee.

This is not directly transferable to a private company, but it demonstrates how hybrid working can fundamentally change the economics of office capacity.

Instead of requiring:

1 employee = 1 desk

the CPS operates at approximately:

1 employee = 0.54 desks

In another UK government example, an independent review calculated that the IOPC's Canary Wharf office cost approximately £7,428 per FTE per year.

At actual average attendance, however, the effective cost per occupied desk rose above £56,000 per year because so much space was unused.

Underutilized office space can therefore become extraordinarily expensive.

Madrid prime office rent has reached €45 per square metre per month

The office-cost argument is particularly relevant in expensive European cities.

JLL reported that prime Madrid office rents reached approximately:

€45/m²/month

by the second quarter of 2026.

For comparison, the UK central government office estate reported average space utilization of approximately:

7.2 m² per FTE

in 2024–25.

Using those figures purely as an illustrative scenario:

7.2 m² × €45 × 12 months = €3,888

That represents approximately €3,888 of prime annual rent per employee, before service charges, electricity, cleaning, furniture, security, insurance, IT infrastructure and other workplace costs.

For 1,000 workers:

€3.89 million per year

in illustrative rent alone.

Again, this is not a market-wide employer average: it combines a prime Madrid rental benchmark with a public-sector office-space benchmark simply to demonstrate the scale of the property variable.

Fully remote work may still carry an average productivity penalty

Despite the positive examples, Stanford researchers reviewing the wider evidence estimate that fully remote work is approximately 10% less productive than fully in-person work on average.

The researchers identify communication difficulties, weaker mentoring, company culture and motivation among the likely reasons.

But their economic conclusion is particularly important.

They argue that the cost savings from fully remote work—especially office-space savings and access to lower-cost global talent—can be larger than the productivity loss.

That distinction is central to the profitability question.

Imagine that an office worker produces €100 of economic output at a cost of €80.

Profit contribution:

€20

Suppose moving the job remotely reduces output by 10%:

€90 output

But employment and infrastructure costs fall from €80 to €65.

Profit contribution becomes:

€25

The employee is now less productive but more profitable.

This is only an illustrative example, but it demonstrates why productivity statistics alone cannot answer the remote-work profitability question.

Office work has measurable economic advantages too

Physical offices are not simply an expense.

They can generate productive interactions.

A major Microsoft study examining communication patterns among 61,182 employees found that company-wide remote work made collaboration networks more static and siloed.

Employees developed fewer connections between different parts of the organization and shifted from synchronous communication towards more asynchronous communication.

Another recent study of software engineers found that physical proximity to teammates increased coding feedback by 18.3% and improved code quality.

The gains were particularly concentrated among younger and less-experienced employees.

But proximity also imposed a cost: experienced engineers produced less code when sitting near colleagues because some of their time was effectively being transferred into helping others.

From an organizational perspective, that may still be profitable.

The senior engineer produces less today, but the junior engineer becomes better tomorrow.

This type of knowledge transfer is extremely difficult to capture in conventional productivity statistics.

What if remote workers only came to the office once a month?

Perhaps the most interesting recent experiment was published by the NBER in June 2026.

Researchers randomly divided 248 fully remote customer-service employees into two groups.

One remained fully remote.

The second group came into the office together just:

one day per month.

The results were surprisingly large.

Employees attending the monthly office day eventually handled:

7.8% more calls per hour.

They also spent:

36 additional minutes communicating with colleagues

during the week after attending the office.

Workers randomly seated next to each other were:

11 percentage points more likely to communicate afterwards.

And employee attrition fell by approximately:

one-third.

Researchers calculated that the combined productivity and retention gains generated an estimated:

5:1 benefit-cost ratio.

That means approximately $5 of economic benefit for every $1 spent implementing the coordinated monthly office day in that particular setting.

This result changes the remote-versus-office question considerably.

The optimum arrangement may not require choosing between zero office days and five office days.

In some organizations, the economic value of an office may be concentrated into a surprisingly small number of strategically coordinated interactions.

The OECD reaches a similar conclusion: two to three remote days

The OECD surveyed managers and workers across 25 countries and found that both groups generally viewed teleworking positively.

But neither extreme emerged as the preferred model.

The estimated ideal was approximately:

2–3 remote days per week.

The OECD describes the relationship as an inverted U.

At low levels of remote work, employees gain from reduced commuting, fewer distractions and greater autonomy.

As remote intensity becomes very high, however, communication and knowledge flows begin deteriorating.

The highest efficiency may therefore occur somewhere between the two extremes.

Interestingly, OECD managers estimated that approximately 42% of the workforce should have teleworking arrangements, while only around 5% should work completely from home.

A hypothetical 1,000-worker profitability calculation

Consider a knowledge-based company employing 1,000 people.

Assume that its workforce behaves similarly to the employees in the Trip.com hybrid experiment.

Moving from five office days to two home days produces:

Measured productivity effect: approximately 0%

Turnover reduction: approximately 33%

Six-month departures avoided: approximately 24

Replacement cost per employee: $20,000

Result:

$480,000 saved every six months

or an annualized theoretical figure of:

$960,000

before property savings.

Now assume each employee values hybrid working at approximately 5% of salary, consistent with the international NBER research.

At an average €60,000 salary:

€60,000 × 5% = €3,000

of perceived annual flexibility value per worker.

Across 1,000 workers:

€3 million of employee-perceived benefit

without necessarily adding €3 million to payroll.

Finally, two remote days each week generate approximately:

48 hours of commuting time annually redirected towards work per employee

using the international commuting study's averages.

Across 1,000 employees:

approximately 48,000 hours per year.

Not every one of those hours converts directly into saleable output, so it would be incorrect to add them mechanically to profit.

But together, the numbers show why hybrid work can have a powerful economic proposition even when measured employee productivity remains exactly the same.

So what is actually more profitable: home or office?

The evidence increasingly suggests that asking whether “home” or “office” is more profitable is the wrong binary question.

Fully remote work can generate impressive savings and, in some jobs, productivity increases of 10–22%.

But other controlled experiments have found homeworking productivity losses reaching 18%.

Full-time office work can improve learning, mentoring and cross-team knowledge transfer, yet companies pay substantially more property and commuting-related costs to maintain it.

Hybrid work currently produces the most consistent economic evidence.

One of the strongest randomized studies found:

0% meaningful productivity loss

combined with:

33% lower employee attrition.

International research suggests employees value that flexibility at approximately:

5% of salary.

OECD research suggests the optimum is around:

2–3 remote days per week.

And the newest randomized experiment suggests that even predominantly remote organizations may capture substantial office benefits through coordinated physical interaction as infrequent as:

one day per month

with researchers calculating a:

~5:1 benefit-cost ratio.

The emerging economic argument is therefore not that the office has become unnecessary.

It is that companies may need considerably less office than they once assumed.

For many knowledge businesses, the most profitable model may be one in which employees perform concentration-heavy individual work remotely while offices are deliberately used for the activities where physical proximity produces the greatest return: collaboration, training, mentoring, innovation and relationship building.

In other words, the financially relevant question may no longer be:

“Are home workers or office workers more productive?”

It may be:

“How many office days does a company actually need to pay for in order to capture the economic benefits of being together?”

Current experimental evidence increasingly suggests that the answer may be considerably fewer than five.

The post Homeworking vs Office Work: Which Is More Profitable for Employers? appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop are facing renewed scrutiny over product safety after a Reuters investigation found more than 20 skin-lightening products previously identified as containing prohibited levels of mercury still being offered through major online marketplaces.

Published on September 16, the investigation found that products appearing on banned-product lists were still available to consumers through Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop in the United States, as well as through Amazon’s third-party marketplaces in France, India, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium.

Reuters noted an important limitation: it could not independently confirm that every product currently listed still contained mercury. However, regulators and public-health authorities had previously tested or identified several products as containing prohibited levels of the toxic metal.

The findings raise a broader question for global e-commerce: how effectively can large marketplaces prevent unsafe products from reappearing when they are sold by third-party merchants operating across multiple jurisdictions?

Mercury skin-lightening products remain available online

The Reuters investigation identified more than 20 products available online that had appeared on banned-product or warning lists because of mercury concerns. Some were still being offered despite years of international restrictions.

Mercury is sometimes added to skin-lightening products because it suppresses melanin production, but exposure can cause serious health effects. The US Food and Drug Administration warns that repeated use of mercury-containing skin products can lead to kidney damage, neurological problems and other potentially permanent health consequences.

The FDA also states that mercury is not permitted in cosmetics except under very limited circumstances that do not apply to these products.

Reuters found products across several countries

The problem is not confined to one marketplace or one jurisdiction. Reuters found suspect products available through marketplace listings accessible in:

• The United States
• France
• Belgium
• India
• The United Arab Emirates

That geographic spread matters for cross-border commerce. Products sold by third-party merchants can move quickly between markets, while seller identities, product names, and listings can change.

This makes enforcement more difficult because a product removed from one platform or seller account may later reappear under another name or through another merchant. Reuters reported that some listings also failed to disclose mercury in their ingredient information.

The core issue is marketplace seller oversight

The investigation highlights one of the most persistent challenges facing global marketplaces. Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop do not manufacture most of the products sold by third-party sellers.

Instead, they provide the platform, payments infrastructure, traffic and, in some cases, fulfillment. That model creates enormous product selection and international reach.

It also creates a regulatory challenge. Platforms must monitor millions of listings and large numbers of independent merchants while attempting to identify products that may be unsafe, illegal or mislabelled.

The scale of the marketplace model makes manual review impossible, meaning platforms rely heavily on automated systems, seller verification, regulatory databases and consumer reports. The Reuters findings suggest that these systems do not always prevent prohibited products from reappearing.

Amazon, Temu and TikTok say prohibited products are not allowed

The platforms involved maintain policies banning illegal or dangerous products. Reuters reported that the companies said they prohibit products that violate applicable safety rules and take action when they identify problematic listings.

Marketplace policies alone, however, do not guarantee that unsafe products will never appear. The more important question for regulators is whether platforms have effective systems to identify risks, verify sellers and prevent previously removed products from being relisted. That distinction is becoming increasingly important in Europe.

EU rules are placing greater responsibility on marketplaces

The European Union has significantly increased obligations for online marketplaces through the Digital Services Act and the General Product Safety Regulation.

Under the Digital Services Act, marketplaces must make reasonable efforts to verify traders, improve product traceability and reduce the circulation of illegal products. The European Commission says marketplaces must also check that products offered through their services are safe and compliant.

If a marketplace becomes aware that an illegal product has been sold, it must also inform affected customers, identify the seller and provide information about possible remedies. These rules increasingly shift regulatory focus away from individual sellers and toward the systems marketplaces operate.

Temu is already under EU scrutiny over illegal products

Temu is already facing regulatory scrutiny in Europe over product safety. In July 2025, the European Commission preliminarily found that Temu had breached its obligations under the Digital Services Act by failing to properly assess the risk of illegal products being sold on its marketplace.

The Commission's own mystery-shopping exercise found a high risk that consumers would encounter non-compliant products, including toys and small electronics. That investigation makes the Reuters findings especially relevant.

The issue is no longer simply whether an individual unsafe product appears online. Regulators are increasingly examining whether marketplace systems are structurally capable of preventing illegal goods from repeatedly reaching consumers.

EU enforcement is becoming more aggressive

The European Commission has already demonstrated that failures around illegal products can result in significant penalties. In July 2026, the Commission fined AliExpress €550 million for breaches of the Digital Services Act related to the dissemination of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products.

The Commission concluded that AliExpress had failed to adequately assess and mitigate the risks created by illegal products on its platform. That enforcement action established an important precedent. Large marketplaces are expected to show they have systematic safeguards in place, rather than simply removing individual products after problems are reported.

For Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop, the Reuters investigation therefore arrives at a time when European regulators are already demanding stronger marketplace accountability.

Product relisting remains a major challenge

One of the biggest technical problems is preventing products from returning after they have been removed.

A seller can potentially:

• Change the product title
• Alter the images
• Use a different seller account
• Modify the product description
• Move the listing to another marketplace
• Slightly change packaging or branding

This makes enforcement a continuous process rather than a one-time removal. Platforms increasingly use machine learning and product-matching systems to identify duplicate or suspicious listings.

But cross-border marketplaces also have to deal with inconsistent product information, different languages and sellers operating from multiple countries. The Reuters investigation suggests that prohibited products can still bypass these controls.

Unsafe products create a cross-border enforcement problem

Traditional product-safety regulation is largely national. E-commerce is not. A product can be manufactured in one country, sold by a merchant in another and delivered to a consumer somewhere else entirely.

That creates gaps between different regulatory systems. The FDA, for example, can issue warnings and take enforcement action in the United States. European authorities can impose separate restrictions.

But sellers can still attempt to reach consumers through marketplaces operating globally. Reuters reported that regulators and public-health organizations have increasingly called for stronger international cooperation to address the problem. For cross-border e-commerce, this is becoming one of the most difficult compliance challenges.

Why mercury-containing cosmetics are especially concerning

The health risks associated with mercury make these products particularly serious. The FDA says mercury exposure can affect the nervous system and kidneys and may cause symptoms including tremors, memory problems and changes in vision or hearing.

Exposure can also affect other people living in the same household because mercury may contaminate towels, clothing and other surfaces. The FDA specifically warns that children and pregnant individuals can be particularly vulnerable.

This makes the issue substantially more serious than conventional marketplace problems such as inaccurate product descriptions or counterfeit branding. Unsafe cosmetics can create direct public-health consequences.

Marketplace compliance is becoming a competitive issue

The investigation also highlights how product safety could increasingly affect competition between marketplaces. Consumers typically choose platforms based on factors such as:

• Price
• Selection
• Delivery speed
• Convenience
• Returns

Regulators are increasingly adding another requirement: trust. A marketplace that cannot effectively verify its sellers or products may face greater enforcement costs, reputational damage and stricter regulatory oversight. Large platforms therefore have a commercial incentive to improve product-safety controls beyond simply satisfying regulators.

Third-party marketplaces face growing responsibility

The broader direction of regulation is clear. Governments increasingly expect marketplaces to take responsibility for the ecosystem they operate. That does not mean platforms are automatically responsible for every illegal product offered by an independent merchant.

But regulators increasingly expect them to demonstrate effective seller verification, product monitoring and rapid removal systems. The European Commission's current approach under the DSA illustrates this shift particularly clearly. Large marketplaces must assess systemic risks and show that their mitigation measures are effective.

Cross-border e-commerce makes enforcement harder

The rapid international growth of platforms such as Temu, TikTok Shop and Amazon Marketplace makes the challenge even larger. A seller can potentially reach customers across dozens of markets without maintaining physical retail operations in those countries.

This greatly expands opportunities for SMEs and manufacturers. But it also allows problematic products to spread quickly across borders. Regulators are therefore attempting to make marketplaces part of the enforcement infrastructure.

Instead of monitoring every overseas seller individually, authorities increasingly require platforms to verify who is selling and what is being offered.

The Reuters investigation exposes a persistent marketplace weakness

The presence of previously flagged mercury products on some of the world's largest e-commerce platforms shows how difficult product-safety enforcement remains. Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop all have systems intended to prevent prohibited products from being sold. Yet unsafe or previously identified products can still reappear.

For marketplaces, the challenge is no longer simply removing listings when regulators identify them. The next stage is preventing those products from returning under new sellers, names or packaging. As regulators strengthen rules around seller verification and product traceability, this issue is likely to become increasingly important for cross-border e-commerce.

The Reuters investigation ultimately highlights a central tension in the marketplace model. The same open infrastructure that allows millions of third-party sellers to reach global consumers also makes it difficult to guarantee that every product offered is safe and compliant. For regulators, platforms and consumers, solving that problem is becoming one of the defining challenges of global marketplace commerce.

The post Amazon, Temu and TikTok Shop Face Scrutiny After Banned Mercury Cosmetics Found on Marketplaces appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Allegro has opened a new office in Shenzhen and formally established a Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE) in China, strengthening the European marketplace’s direct relationship with Chinese sellers.

The move gives Allegro a physical presence in one of the world’s most important e-commerce and manufacturing hubs. According to the company, the local operation will allow it to work more closely with merchants, improve seller verification and more directly enforce the standards governing products sold through its marketplaces.

For Allegro, the expansion into Shenzhen is not only about increasing access to Chinese merchants. The company is positioning the office as a way to strengthen product compliance and consumer protection while reducing its reliance on intermediaries between the marketplace and sellers based in China.

Allegro establishes a WFOE in China

Alongside opening the Shenzhen office, Allegro has formally created a WFOE, or Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise.

This type of company allows a foreign business to operate a locally incorporated entity in China under its own ownership.

Until now, Allegro primarily managed the verification of international partners and supported product-compliance activities from its offices in Warsaw, Poznań and Prague. The company acknowledged that overseeing merchants from more than 8,000 kilometres away, combined with the time-zone difference, created limitations for direct cooperation.

The Shenzhen team is therefore intended to bring Allegro much closer to sellers operating in China.

It will support merchants serving Allegro customers across the marketplace's Central and Eastern European footprint, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.

Allegro wants greater control over Chinese sellers

One of the most important objectives behind the Shenzhen expansion is seller oversight.

Chinese merchants operating on Allegro will continue to be subject to the same marketplace rules and applicable product safety and compliance requirements as other sellers using the platform.

The difference is that Allegro will now have employees operating much closer to the merchants themselves.

The company says this should allow it to develop more direct and transparent relationships with partners, identify potential problems more quickly and enforce marketplace standards more effectively.

Allegro CEO Marcin Kuśmierz described the new operation as an “embassy” for Allegro close to the source.

According to Kuśmierz, establishing a direct presence in Shenzhen will allow the company to reduce its dependence on intermediaries while developing closer relationships with sellers and supporting fair competition, product safety and consumer protection.

Chinese sellers remain important to European marketplaces

The move also reflects the increasingly important role played by Chinese merchants in European marketplace commerce.

For European platforms, attracting sellers from China's vast manufacturing and e-commerce ecosystem can significantly expand product selection and improve price competitiveness.

However, the rapid growth of direct-to-consumer cross-border commerce from China has simultaneously increased regulatory scrutiny in Europe, particularly around product safety, consumer protection, customs compliance and the responsibilities of online marketplaces.

For platforms such as Allegro, expanding Chinese seller participation therefore creates both a commercial opportunity and a compliance challenge.

A local operation in Shenzhen potentially gives the company greater visibility into its seller base before products reach consumers in European markets.

Shenzhen gives Allegro access to an e-commerce innovation hub

Seller supervision is only part of Allegro's strategy.

The company also sees Shenzhen as a source of logistics and technology innovation that could ultimately be transferred to its European operations.

Shenzhen has developed into one of China's most important technology, manufacturing and e-commerce centres. Allegro describes the city as a global e-commerce incubator and expects its presence there to give the company faster access to emerging logistics and technological solutions.

Those innovations could eventually be introduced across Allegro's Central and Eastern European markets.

The company explicitly connects this access to its ability to compete against much larger international e-commerce groups.

Allegro strengthens its position in Central and Eastern Europe

The Chinese expansion comes as Allegro continues to broaden its ambitions beyond its core Polish marketplace.

Its operations currently cover Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, making the company one of the most significant home-grown e-commerce platforms in Central and Eastern Europe.

At the same time, competition across the region is becoming increasingly international.

European marketplaces now compete not only with established global players but also with fast-growing Asian platforms and cross-border sellers capable of offering extensive product catalogues at highly competitive prices.

Establishing a permanent presence in Shenzhen gives Allegro a way to engage with the same Chinese merchant and technology ecosystem powering much of this international marketplace growth.

Rather than managing that ecosystem entirely from Europe, Allegro can now interact with it directly.

Allegro says its European identity will remain unchanged

Despite establishing an operation in China, Allegro has stressed that the expansion does not represent a shift away from its European identity.

Kuśmierz said the company's “DNA remains 100% European,” arguing that the Shenzhen office is designed to strengthen Allegro's ability to apply European standards closer to where many products and sellers originate.

That distinction is strategically important.

Allegro is effectively attempting to combine access to China's enormous seller and innovation ecosystem with the consumer protection and compliance expectations attached to operating a major European marketplace.

The Shenzhen office therefore represents more than geographic expansion.

It gives Allegro a direct presence inside one of the world's most important e-commerce ecosystems while providing the marketplace with another layer of control over the merchants and products ultimately reaching European consumers.

As competition between European marketplaces and global e-commerce platforms intensifies, being closer to Chinese sellers may increasingly become a strategic advantage rather than simply a sourcing opportunity.

The post Allegro Opens Shenzhen Office to Work Directly With Chinese Sellers appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Amazon has suspended operations with cargo carrier 21 Air following a fatal Boeing 767 cargo crash at Miami International Airport, as US investigators continue examining the circumstances surrounding the accident.

The aircraft, operated by 21 Air on behalf of Amazon Air, overran Runway 30 while landing at Miami International Airport on September 6 and struck vehicles beyond the runway. Five people on the ground were killed and five others were injured.

Amazon confirmed on September 13 that it had decided to pause its operations with the carrier after reviewing the circumstances surrounding the accident.

“Safety has always been our top priority, whether in our own operations or when we’re working with partners,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said.

Amazon added that it would continue supporting the investigation and those affected by the accident.

21 Air operated the flight for Amazon Air

The accident involved 21 Air Flight 7598, a Boeing 767-33A cargo aircraft operating from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami.

The aircraft was flying as part of Amazon’s dedicated air-cargo network when the accident occurred.

Amazon Air relies on third-party cargo airlines to operate aircraft carrying packages between fulfillment and sorting hubs across its logistics network. 21 Air is one of the carriers that has operated flights on Amazon’s behalf.

Reuters reports that the Boeing 767 involved in the crash had originally operated as a passenger aircraft between 1994 and 2015 before being converted for cargo operations.

The Miami flight was reportedly the aircraft’s third flight of the day.

Amazon pauses operations following internal review

Amazon did not immediately suspend its relationship with 21 Air after the crash.

Instead, the company initially focused on supporting investigators and those affected.

On September 13, Amazon confirmed that it had conducted its own review and decided to halt operations with the carrier.

The company said:

“After the tragic incident last weekend, we’ve spent time supporting the investigation and reviewing some of the surrounding circumstances, and we’ve decided to pause our operations with 21 Air, the operator of Flight 7598.”

Amazon has not said how long the suspension will remain in place or whether the relationship with 21 Air will ultimately resume.

NTSB investigation remains ongoing

The US National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation.

The NTSB recovered both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder and successfully downloaded information from the devices.

The agency has stressed that its findings remain preliminary and subject to change.

Early recorder data indicates that the aircraft approached the runway at high speed.

According to the NTSB, one pilot repeatedly commented on the aircraft’s excessive speed during the final stages of the approach.

Automated warnings heard on the cockpit voice recorder included:

• “Sink rate”
• “Too low terrain”
• Altitude callouts during the final approach

The aircraft touched down at a recorded groundspeed of approximately 158 knots.

The recorded data also indicates that the crew initiated what appeared to be a go-around attempt after touchdown, with engine throttles increased before subsequently returning to idle.

The NTSB reported that there was no indication in the recorded data that the aircraft’s speed brakes or thrust reversers were deployed before the end of the recording.

These findings do not establish the cause of the crash.

The investigation remains active, and the NTSB has not issued a final determination regarding responsibility or contributing factors.

Aircraft overran the runway by around 1,300 feet

According to preliminary information reported by Reuters, the aircraft continued approximately 1,300 feet beyond the runway before striking vehicles outside the airport area.

Five people on the ground were killed.

The aircraft's two pilots survived the accident and were treated following the crash.

The NTSB deployed a large investigative team to Miami to examine the aircraft, flight operations, crew actions, airport infrastructure and other potential factors.

Investigators are also examining the runway environment and the absence of an Engineered Materials Arresting System at the relevant runway end.

Why the incident matters for Amazon’s logistics network

The suspension is significant because Amazon Air has become an increasingly important part of Amazon’s vertically integrated logistics strategy.

Rather than relying exclusively on traditional parcel carriers, Amazon has spent years building its own transportation infrastructure covering:

• Fulfillment centers
• Sorting facilities
• Ground transportation
• Delivery stations
• Last-mile delivery fleets
• Dedicated air cargo operations

Amazon Air connects major distribution hubs and allows inventory to move quickly between different regions.

The system plays an especially important role in supporting fast delivery promises by reducing Amazon’s dependence on external air-freight networks.

Amazon does not generally operate most of these aircraft itself.

Instead, contracted airlines operate planes dedicated to Amazon’s network.

This makes partner-carrier safety and operational oversight an important component of the wider Amazon logistics system.

Third-party carriers remain central to Amazon Air

Amazon Air has grown considerably since the company began building its air network in the middle of the last decade.

The operation uses a combination of Boeing 767s and other cargo aircraft flown by contracted operators.

This model allows Amazon to control capacity and flight schedules without becoming a conventional airline itself.

However, it also means that the performance and safety of partner airlines can directly affect Amazon’s logistics operations.

The decision to suspend 21 Air demonstrates the level of scrutiny Amazon is applying to contracted aviation partners following the Miami accident.

It also raises questions about how quickly Amazon can replace capacity if an individual carrier is removed from the network.

Immediate disruption to Amazon deliveries appears limited

Amazon has not announced any broad disruption to customer deliveries as a result of the suspension.

Its air network includes multiple aircraft operators and distribution hubs, meaning cargo can potentially be reassigned to other flights and carriers.

The scale of Amazon’s wider logistics system also provides flexibility through alternative ground and air routes.

Nevertheless, any prolonged suspension of an operating partner can require capacity to be redistributed across the network.

The effect will depend partly on how many flights and aircraft 21 Air had been operating for Amazon and how quickly alternative capacity can be arranged.

Amazon has not disclosed those details.

Cargo aviation safety receives renewed scrutiny

The accident has also placed renewed attention on safety within the rapidly expanding cargo aviation sector.

E-commerce growth has increased demand for overnight and time-sensitive air freight, particularly within networks operated by Amazon, FedEx, UPS and major logistics companies.

Cargo aircraft often operate intensive schedules with overnight flights and rapid aircraft turnarounds.

That makes maintenance, training, crew procedures and operational oversight critical.

The Miami accident is likely to receive significant scrutiny because it involved an aircraft operating within one of the world's most sophisticated e-commerce logistics networks.

However, no conclusions should be drawn about the broader safety of Amazon Air or 21 Air until the investigation is complete.

NTSB data points to an unstable approach

The preliminary NTSB information provides important details about the final moments of the flight.

The cockpit recording indicates that one pilot raised concerns about the aircraft's speed during the approach.

The flight data recorder also shows that the aircraft touched down at high speed before braking was applied.

The aircraft subsequently attempted what appears to have been a go-around after touchdown.

These details will form part of a much wider investigation into:

• Crew decision-making
• Aircraft configuration
• Landing performance
• Training and procedures
• Aircraft systems
• Airport infrastructure

The NTSB investigation could take many months before a final report and probable cause determination are issued.

Amazon continues to support the investigation

Amazon initially described the loss of life as weighing heavily on the company and said it was fully committed to cooperating with authorities.

Following its decision to pause 21 Air operations, Amazon reiterated that it would continue supporting the investigation.

21 Air has also said it is cooperating with investigators.

For Amazon, the immediate challenge is likely to be maintaining logistics continuity while investigators examine both the accident itself and the operational circumstances surrounding the flight.

A serious test for Amazon’s vertically integrated logistics model

Amazon has invested heavily in bringing more of its logistics operations under its own control.

That strategy has helped the company shorten delivery times and reduce dependence on conventional parcel carriers.

But increased control also brings greater responsibility.

The more Amazon relies on dedicated aircraft, warehouses, delivery fleets and contracted operators working specifically within its logistics ecosystem, the more operational performance across those networks becomes directly associated with Amazon itself.

The Miami crash therefore represents more than an aviation accident involving a third-party cargo airline.

It is also a serious test of the partner-management and safety systems supporting Amazon’s increasingly integrated logistics infrastructure.

Amazon has responded by suspending operations with 21 Air while investigators continue their work.

Whether that suspension becomes permanent will likely depend on what the NTSB and other authorities ultimately determine.

For now, the most important fact remains that the investigation is ongoing, and the preliminary recorder data should not be interpreted as a final conclusion about the cause of the accident.

The post Amazon Pauses 21 Air Operations After Fatal Miami Cargo Crash appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

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Mollie has completed its acquisition of GoCardless, creating a combined European payments and financial services group serving more than 350,000 businesses across over 30 markets.

The deal, originally announced in December 2025, brings together Mollie’s card payments, local payment methods, business accounts and financing capabilities with GoCardless’ expertise in Direct Debit, Pay by Bank and recurring bank payments.

Mollie CEO Koen Köppen will lead the combined group, while GoCardless will continue operating under the name “GoCardless, a Mollie company” and remain under the leadership of co-founder Hiroki Takeuchi. Mollie says maintaining the GoCardless brand reflects the strategic importance of both its existing customer base and its Pay by Bank technology.

Mollie CEO Koen Köppen will lead the combined group, while GoCardless will continue operating under the name “GoCardless, a Mollie company” and remain under the leadership of co-founder Hiroki Takeuchi. Mollie says maintaining the GoCardless brand reflects the strategic importance of both its existing customer base and its Pay by Bank technology.

The completion of the acquisition marks an important step in Mollie’s attempt to build a broader European financial platform capable of handling multiple payment methods, banking services and business financing through a single provider.

Mollie and GoCardless create a broader European payments platform

The strategic logic behind the acquisition is largely based on the complementary nature of the two companies.

Mollie has traditionally focused strongly on merchant acquiring, card payments and local European payment methods.

GoCardless, meanwhile, has built its business around bank-based payments, particularly Direct Debit and open banking-enabled Pay by Bank solutions.

Combining the two creates a platform capable of supporting:card payments,local European payment methods,Direct Debit,Pay by Bank,recurring payments,business accounts,and financing.

When the deal was first announced in December 2025, the companies said the objective was to create a single provider capable of reducing the fragmentation many businesses face when operating several payment and financial platforms simultaneously.

This fragmentation is particularly relevant for international e-commerce businesses.

A merchant expanding across Europe may use one provider for cards, another for local payment methods, another for bank transfers and a separate banking partner for accounts and financing.

Each additional provider can create more integrations, reconciliation work and operational complexity.

More than 350,000 businesses across 30+ markets

The combined group now serves more than 350,000 businesses across more than 30 markets.

That gives the new organisation significant scale across Europe while also expanding its reach internationally.

Mollie has built much of its business around a highly localised European strategy, supporting market-specific payment methods, onboarding requirements and merchant needs.

The post Mollie Completes GoCardless Acquisition, Creating European Payments Group Serving 350,000 Businesses appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.