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.

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.

The must-attend event for every B2C and B2B business selling online in the UK. As retail and eCommerce evolve at pace - becoming smarter, faster, and more connected - eCommerce Expo brings together industry leaders, innovators, and visionaries shaping the future of buying, selling, and customer experience.

Join us on 23–24 September 2026 at Excel London to explore the latest in AI-driven shopping, sustainable fulfilment, and next-generation growth strategies. Across two days, discover practical insights to drive profitable growth, create seamless and high-converting customer journeys, and build scalable operations that protect your margins.

Learn how:

• Drive profitable, sustainable growth
• Create seamless, high-converting customer journeys
• Build scalable operations while protecting your margins
• Connect with leading technology and service providers
• Share ideas and experiences with like-minded industry peers

Connect with leading suppliers, gain valuable industry insight, and network with like-minded peers, all in one place.

Register Now!

The post eCommerce Expo: The UK's biggest eCommerce event! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

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.

Amazon has officially brought its Prime Air drone delivery service to UK customers, marking the first time the company has expanded its drone-based last-mile network outside the United States.

The service is operating from Amazon’s 465,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Darlington, England, where eligible customers within a roughly 7.5-mile (12 km) radius can have selected products delivered by autonomous MK30 drones.

Amazon says orders can arrive in 60 minutes or less, with some deliveries potentially completed in around 30 minutes. Millions of products are eligible provided they meet the drone’s size and weight restrictions. The launch is a major milestone for Amazon’s long-running Prime Air project and comes as the company also dramatically accelerates the service in the United States.

Amazon now plans to make Prime Air available across nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of 2026, transforming what was once a limited experimental program into a potentially significant component of its last-mile network.

Darlington becomes Amazon’s first Prime Air location outside the US

Amazon first announced plans to bring Prime Air to the UK in 2023. Darlington was subsequently selected as the company's first British location, with the fulfillment center confirmed as the proposed base in January 2025.

Drone flights began from the site in early 2026, and Amazon now confirms it is delivering parcels to customers from Darlington. According to Amazon, Darlington is the first Prime Air site anywhere outside the United States. The development therefore represents more than another regional delivery experiment.

It is the first international expansion of Amazon's drone logistics model. John Boumphrey, Amazon UK Country Manager, said the launch demonstrates how the company continues to develop new ways to make deliveries faster and more convenient.

Amazon's wider strategy increasingly revolves around shortening the physical distance between inventory and consumers. Prime Air provides an additional option at the extreme end of that strategy: moving lightweight orders directly from a fulfillment center to a customer's property by air.

How Amazon Prime Air works in the UK

Prime Air deliveries in Darlington use Amazon's latest MK30 drone. The aircraft stands about five feet tall, has a wingspan of about five and a half feet, and can carry packages weighing up to five pounds, or about 2.2 kg.

To qualify, a product must also be small enough to fit inside Prime Air's specially designed packaging, roughly the size of a large shoebox. Eligible customers can select drone delivery during the normal Amazon checkout process. Amazon then uses satellite imagery, mapping technology, and AI to identify suitable delivery areas around the customer's property.

Customers currently need access to an appropriate outdoor area such as a: garden, yard, or driveway.

The customer selects the proposed delivery zone digitally without requiring a physical property inspection beforehand. Once the order reaches the Darlington facility, Amazon's existing fulfillment robotics help move the product through the warehouse before it is packed for Prime Air.

An employee then performs a pre-flight inspection, installs a charged battery and loads the package onto the drone. The aircraft subsequently completes most of the delivery autonomously.

The MK30 is designed for autonomous last-mile delivery

The MK30 represents Amazon's latest generation of delivery drone. It uses onboard perception, navigation and detect-and-avoid technology to identify aircraft, obstacles, people and other hazards while flying.

Amazon says the system allows the drone to make safety decisions independently during a mission. The drones operate using Beyond Visual Line of Sight technology, or BVLOS.

This is particularly important because large-scale drone delivery would not be practical if an operator had to maintain direct visual contact with every aircraft throughout the entire route.

The Darlington operational model envisages drones traveling from Amazon's MME1 fulfillment center toward qualifying customers while generally remaining below 400 feet above ground level. Flight planning also accounts for designated no-fly areas and outdoor concentrations of people.

The UK rollout remains closely connected to CAA trials

Although customers are already receiving packages, Prime Air's UK expansion remains closely linked to the development of Britain's regulatory framework for commercial drones.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority has selected Amazon Prime Air as one of six projects participating in trials designed to develop safe Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations.

The regulator is gathering data on areas including: detect-and-avoid capabilities, electronic visibility, interaction with other aircraft, air traffic control integration, and safe operation in shared airspace. This distinction is important.

Prime Air is already delivering parcels to real customers, but the regulatory structure that would allow these operations to be scaled routinely across Britain is still evolving.

The CAA's longer-term objective is to enable routine BVLOS drone operations in UK airspace, with its roadmap targeting broader implementation from 2027.

Amazon has received approval to operate its drones

Amazon says the MK30 has received Civil Aviation Authority approval to conduct its current operations in Darlington. The wider program nevertheless operates within a tightly controlled aviation environment.

CAA documentation shows that Amazon has been working through the regulator's sandbox process to test how unmanned aircraft can eventually transition from segregated or specially managed airspace into normal shared airspace.

Amazon's proposed operational area also includes mechanisms allowing emergency aircraft to take priority. Prime Air operations are expected to stop when emergency-service aviation, such as police helicopters or helicopter emergency medical services, requires access to the relevant airspace.

This illustrates one of the central obstacles facing drone delivery at scale. The aircraft themselves may already be technically capable of autonomous operations. The harder problem is safely integrating potentially thousands of delivery drones into airspace already used by helicopters, aircraft, emergency services and other drones.

Amazon is rapidly scaling Prime Air in the United States

The UK launch comes alongside Amazon's most aggressive Prime Air expansion to date.

The company says it intends to serve nearly 500 cities and towns in the United States by the end of 2026, compared with a relatively small number of operating locations previously.

Prime Air is already operating around cities including:

Phoenix,
Tampa,
Kansas City,
Omaha,
Baton Rouge,
Detroit,
Houston,
San Antonio,
Dallas,
and Waco.

Amazon also plans to launch operations around Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta and Boise. Each Prime Air location in the US can serve about 175 square miles, according to the company.

Reuters reported that Amazon expects the service to reach approximately 500 US locations by the end of the year, a major increase from the roughly 11 operational sites existing when the latest expansion was announced. This scale-up makes the Darlington operation particularly relevant.

Prime Air is no longer simply a technological demonstration. Amazon is attempting to turn drone delivery into a repeatable logistics model.

Hundreds of thousands of drone deliveries in 2026

Amazon says Prime Air has already delivered hundreds of thousands of packages during 2026, with individual sites now completing thousands of deliveries each day. That marks a significant shift from the program's early years.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first publicly demonstrated the Prime Air concept in 2013. For much of the following decade, commercial drone delivery remained limited by aircraft technology, aviation regulation, operational complexity and local concerns. The latest expansion suggests Amazon believes several of those barriers are beginning to fall.

Why drone delivery matters for e-commerce

The core advantage of drone delivery is speed. Conventional last-mile logistics requires packages to be consolidated into vans, driven along delivery routes and delivered sequentially to dozens or hundreds of addresses.

A drone can potentially bypass much of that route structure. Once an order is processed, the aircraft can travel directly from the fulfillment facility to the customer. For lightweight, urgent items, the resulting delivery time can approach that of a trip to a local store.

That makes drone delivery particularly relevant for products such as: small electronics, household essentials, beauty products, office supplies, health-related items, and other lightweight goods.

Amazon says millions of products are already potentially eligible for Prime Air where the service operates.

Prime Air joins Amazon's wider ultrafast delivery strategy

Drone delivery is only one element of Amazon's increasingly complex last-mile infrastructure. In the UK, Amazon has also introduced Amazon Now, an ultra-fast service offering groceries and household essentials in approximately 30 minutes or less in parts of London.

The company plans to expand Amazon Now into Manchester and Birmingham. The two services solve slightly different logistics problems. Amazon Now relies on inventory positioned in smaller urban fulfillment locations close to consumers. Prime Air instead provides extremely fast transportation for lightweight goods from larger facilities within a defined flight radius.

Amazon could therefore increasingly combine multiple fulfillment models according to: product size, customer location, urgency,
inventory availability, and delivery economics.

The ultimate objective is not necessarily to replace vans with drones. Instead, Amazon is creating additional delivery layers that can handle different types of orders.

Drone delivery still faces practical limitations

Despite its technological appeal, Prime Air has significant limitations. The UK service currently requires customers to live within approximately 12 km of the Darlington facility. Properties must have appropriate outdoor delivery areas. Products must meet strict size and weight limits. Weather conditions can also affect drone operations.

This means Prime Air cannot currently replace conventional parcel delivery for most Amazon orders. Large electronics, furniture, bulk groceries and many other products will continue to require vans or other established transport networks. Amazon's drones are instead likely to complement existing last-mile infrastructure.

Noise, privacy and safety remain concerns

Community acceptance will also determine how quickly drone delivery can scale. Drone operations have faced criticism in some US communities over issues including noise, privacy and safety.

Reuters reported that residents near some planned Prime Air sites have compared the sound of operating drones to equipment such as leaf blowers. Amazon says the latest MK30 aircraft has been specifically designed to reduce noise.

Amazon describes the MK30 as significantly quieter than earlier designs and says its noise level is comparable with conventional delivery activity. But scaling from thousands to potentially millions of flights would inevitably create a different operating environment.

Regulators and local authorities will therefore need to determine acceptable noise, safety and flight-frequency limits as drone delivery becomes more common.

Drone delivery could change last-mile economics

The long-term business case will depend on whether drones can reduce the cost of selected deliveries. Last-mile delivery remains one of the most expensive parts of the e-commerce supply chain. Traditional delivery networks require: drivers, vehicles, fuel or electricity, route planning, local depots, and significant labor.

Autonomous drones potentially reduce some of those costs for lightweight packages. However, they introduce different expenses, including aircraft acquisition, maintenance, batteries, aviation compliance, flight infrastructure and specialist staff.

The most likely future is therefore not a completely drone-based delivery network. Instead, fulfillment platforms may increasingly use algorithms to determine the most efficient delivery method for each individual order. A parcel could be assigned to a van, bike courier, locker, autonomous vehicle or drone depending on its characteristics.

Darlington could become a blueprint for European expansion

Amazon has not yet announced a broad network of Prime Air sites across Europe. Nevertheless, Darlington represents an important test case. If Amazon can demonstrate reliable, safe, and economically viable operations in the UK, the model could potentially be replicated around other fulfillment centers.

Europe's regulatory environment, dense population centers and complex airspace could make expansion more difficult than in some US suburban markets. But the strategic opportunity is substantial.

Amazon already operates an extensive network of fulfillment centers across Europe. Adding drone infrastructure to selected facilities could create ultra-fast delivery zones around those locations without requiring an entirely separate logistics network.

The UK is actively preparing for wider commercial drone operations

The British government is also investing in the wider development of commercial drones. In May 2026, the government announced £46.5 million in support to accelerate drone and advanced-air-mobility regulation, infrastructure, and security systems.

The program includes measures designed to enable commercial drone delivery while also improving systems for identifying unauthorized aircraft. The government has explicitly cited Amazon's Darlington operations when discussing the UK's transition toward more routine commercial drone use. This makes Prime Air part of a broader transformation in British aviation rather than an isolated Amazon experiment.

The last mile is becoming increasingly autonomous

Amazon's UK Prime Air launch highlights a wider trend across logistics. Warehouses are already heavily automated. Robots move inventory through fulfillment centers. Artificial intelligence predicts demand and optimizes inventory positioning. Autonomous systems increasingly manage sorting and packaging. Drone delivery extends automation beyond the warehouse doors. The potential future e-commerce journey therefore becomes increasingly automated from beginning to end:

Order placed → inventory selected → robotic fulfilment → automated sorting → autonomous transportation → customer delivery

Human workers remain central to many parts of that system, but the number of steps that can be performed autonomously continues to increase.

Prime Air enters a new phase

Amazon has spent more than a decade trying to turn drone delivery from a futuristic concept into operational infrastructure. The Darlington launch marks an important milestone in that effort. For the first time, customers outside the United States are receiving real Amazon orders through Prime Air.

At the same time, the company is preparing to scale the service across hundreds of American communities. Substantial barriers remain, including regulation, weather, noise, property suitability, package size, and public acceptance. But Prime Air is moving beyond the experimental phase.

The bigger question is no longer simply whether Amazon can deliver packages by drone. It is whether drone delivery can become reliable, affordable, and scalable enough to earn a permanent place alongside vans, lockers, same-day couriers, and traditional parcel networks. Darlington will provide one of the first major tests of that question outside the United States.

The post Amazon Prime Air Launches Drone Deliveries in the UK as Global Expansion Accelerates appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

HELMOND, 26 August 2026 – Maxi-Cosi is taking the next step in how it connects with parents across Europe. On Thursday evening, 27 August, the brand will broadcast Parenthood Unfiltered, an interactive live parenting show broadcast across Maxi-Cosi’s own platforms in seven European countries, as well as via social channels.

To the best of our knowledge, this makes Maxi-Cosi one of the first brands in the European baby and juvenile products category to broadcast an interactive livestream at this scale across its own D2C platforms and social channels. The broadcast is part of a pilot series developed by Maxi-Cosi together with live commerce agency YSS – Your Shopping Stream.

Following an initial closed pilot earlier this summer, the second edition will be open to everyone and distributed more widely. At this stage, the focus is on testing and learning – including how the format can drive reach, engagement and interaction, and what role live commerce can play within the customer journey.

Entertainment, interaction and commerce

With Parenthood Unfiltered, Maxi-Cosi has created a ‘parentainment’ format that brings together honest conversations about parenthood, expert insights, entertainment and product integration. During Back to Reality, parents and experts discuss the transition from the summer holidays back to everyday family life.

Viewers can participate live through questions, polls, games and giveaways. Maxi-Cosi products are also integrated into the show, while viewers will receive access to an exclusive discount code during the broadcast. The result is an interactive live experience that brings together elements of television, social media and e-commerce.

From a Dutch case to European scale

For YSS, the collaboration with Maxi-Cosi follows an interactive livestream with Dutch celebrity chef Herman den Blijker earlier this year. With Maxi-Cosi, YSS is now scaling its live commerce model across seven European markets at once.

“The next evolution of live commerce lies, in my view, precisely in this scalability,” says Suzanne Pronk, founder of YSS. “It’s not about simply going live on social media, but about building formats where content, interaction and commerce come together.

Maxi-Cosi shows how one central production can reach audiences across multiple European markets, with owned platforms and social channels reinforcing each other.” The live production is delivered in collaboration with FabriQ Media Group, with the interactive technology powered by Livery Video.

The post Maxi-Cosi brings interactive live commerce to seven European markets appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Stripe believes one of e-commerce's most familiar elements could eventually become obsolete. Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s President of Product and Business, has argued that the traditional checkout page could disappear as artificial intelligence, digital wallets, and agentic commerce increasingly collapse product discovery and payment into a single transaction.

Speaking on the A16z Show, Gaybrick said the checkout page could become unnecessary not only for AI agents, but eventually for human shoppers as well. His argument is straightforward: when payment credentials, identity and authorization are already securely available through tools such as Stripe Link, consumers should increasingly be able to purchase directly from the product or discovery interface rather than navigating several checkout screens.

The prediction offers a glimpse of how Stripe expects online commerce to change as AI agents become increasingly capable of finding products, evaluating options, and completing purchases on behalf of consumers.

From checkout page to instant transaction

The traditional e-commerce journey is familiar:

A customer discovers a product, visits a merchant website, adds it to a cart, proceeds to checkout, enters delivery information, chooses a payment method and confirms the order. Agentic commerce challenges almost every step of that model.

Stripe defines agentic commerce as online shopping in which AI agents can find, compare, and potentially purchase products on users' behalf. The shopper provides an objective — for example, finding a particular product under a certain price with delivery before a specified date — and the agent handles much of the searching and decision-making.

In this environment, the shopper may never need to navigate a conventional checkout page. Instead, product discovery, decision-making, authorization and payment could take place inside an AI assistant, search environment or other digital interface. Stripe explicitly notes that customers using an AI agent may not need to see a checkout page at all.

Why Stripe thinks checkout could disappear

Checkout disappearing doesn't mean the underlying processes vanish. Merchants would still need to calculate taxes, confirm inventory, determine shipping costs, process payments, prevent fraud, manage orders, and handle fulfillment. The difference is that those processes increasingly happen behind the interface.

Instead of presenting each step to a human shopper, commerce infrastructure could communicate directly with an AI agent. Gaybrick has pointed to systems such as Stripe Link and Shopify's Shop Pay as early examples of how stored payment credentials and accelerated checkout can already reduce the number of steps required to purchase online.

Agentic commerce takes that concept considerably further. Rather than simply speeding up a checkout page, AI could make the page unnecessary.

Stripe is already building infrastructure for agentic commerce

Stripe's prediction is closely connected to products the company has been developing over the past year. At Stripe Sessions 2026, the company expanded its Agentic Commerce Suite and announced additional partnerships with companies including Meta and Google. Stripe also introduced new ways for AI agents to pay using Link's agent wallet.

Stripe describes its Agentic Commerce Suite as infrastructure that connects businesses, agents, and buyers. Merchants can make their products available to AI agents while maintaining control over pricing, descriptions, fulfillment and the customer relationship. AI applications can then embed checkout directly inside their own interfaces.

This model represents a fundamental shift in the merchant website's role. Instead of every purchase requiring consumers to reach a retailer's checkout interface, transactions could increasingly be completed wherever the customer discovers the product.

AI agents need their own payment infrastructure

Giving an AI agent purchasing authority creates problems that conventional payment systems were never designed to solve.

An agent may need to:

• Identify the correct product;
• Confirm availability;
• Compare shipping options;
• Understand return policies;
• Operate within a spending limit;
• Prove that the consumer authorized the transaction;
• and complete payment without gaining unrestricted access to the customer's financial credentials.

Stripe has been developing infrastructure specifically for these scenarios.

Its Link wallet for agents can issue a one-time-use card or Shared Payment Token backed by payment methods already stored within Link. According to Stripe, the agent itself does not receive the user's underlying payment credentials. This allows agents to transact while preserving spending controls and payment security.

Stripe has also introduced Issuing for agents and other mechanisms designed to give autonomous software controlled purchasing power.

Machine Payments Protocol removes checkout entirely

The transformation becomes even clearer when commerce takes place between machines rather than between a human and a retailer. In March 2026, Stripe and Tempo introduced the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), an open standard that lets AI agents transact directly with businesses and other services.

Traditional online payment flows assume that a human will visit a website, select a product, and complete a checkout form. MPP instead allows software agents to interact programmatically with paid services. Stripe says conventional financial infrastructure was built primarily for humans, meaning AI agents often struggle with tasks such as navigating pricing pages, selecting subscription tiers, creating accounts or entering payment details.

Machine-readable payment protocols are designed to remove those obstacles. If adoption grows, some forms of commerce may therefore never generate a visible checkout interface at all.

E-commerce UX could become commerce infrastructure

The implications for retailers could be substantial. For years, merchants have invested heavily in optimizing their checkout pages.

Businesses test:

• Button positioning
• Page layouts
• Payment methods
• Form length
• Guest checkout
• Upselling
• Cart recovery
• Conversion rates.

Agentic commerce could shift part of that optimization away from visible user interfaces and toward APIs, structured data, and machine-readable commercial rules. Stripe advises businesses preparing for agentic commerce to expose structured product information and build checkout flows that can function without a human directly interacting with them.

That means an AI agent needs reliable access to information including:

• Product availability
• Pricing
• Shipping times
• Returns policies
• Taxes
• Merchant identity
• Fulfillment guarantees.

In other words, the checkout experience increasingly becomes an infrastructure problem rather than purely a web-design problem.

Product discovery and checkout could merge

One of the biggest changes could be eliminating the boundary between discovering something and buying it. Today, discovery often happens outside the retailer's website.

Consumers may discover products through:

• Google
• Social media
• Marketplaces
• Influencers
• Comparison services
• Increasingly, AI assistants.

Historically, shoppers had to leave that environment and visit a merchant's checkout. Agentic commerce lets the transaction stay inside the discovery layer.

Stripe has already worked with OpenAI on the Agentic Commerce Protocol, designed to allow businesses to sell through AI interfaces while maintaining control over their transactions. Stripe said the protocol's first real-world implementation supported Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT.

The company is also working with AI and technology platforms including Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic, Perplexity, Vercel and others as it develops infrastructure for agent-driven commerce.

Merchants risk becoming invisible to AI agents

The change could also create a new form of competitive pressure. Traditional SEO focuses on ensuring that search engines can discover and understand a merchant. Agentic commerce introduces another audience: machines that are actively choosing which merchant should receive a transaction.

Stripe argues that businesses need structured product catalogs, clean APIs, transparent policies and real-time availability if they want AI agents to transact with them successfully. A retailer that is difficult for an AI agent to understand could theoretically become less competitive even if its consumer-facing website remains excellent.

The industry may therefore see the emergence of what could effectively become agent optimization alongside traditional SEO and conversion-rate optimization.

Trust remains the biggest challenge

Despite rapid technological development, agentic commerce still faces substantial barriers. Consumers must trust AI systems enough to allow them to spend money. Businesses must also distinguish legitimate AI agents from malicious automated systems.

Traditional fraud tools rely heavily on signals associated with human behavior, devices and payment credentials. Agent-initiated transactions can change those patterns. Stripe has acknowledged that agentic commerce challenges many assumptions built into existing permission and fraud systems.

Its Shared Payment Tokens, Link agent wallet and Stripe Radar infrastructure are designed partly to address this problem by attaching authorization and risk information to agent transactions. Human approval is also likely to remain important for many purchases, particularly expensive or sensitive transactions.

Agentic commerce therefore does not necessarily imply giving autonomous software unlimited purchasing authority. Instead, the emerging model relies on controlled delegation.

The checkout page may disappear, but checkout will not

Stripe's prediction should therefore be understood carefully. Commerce will still require authorization, payment processing, taxes, fraud prevention, shipping and fulfillment. What could disappear is the visible page where those processes traditionally come together.

For consumers, that could mean fewer forms, fewer redirects, and fewer abandoned carts. For merchants, however, it could require substantial behind-the-scenes changes. Retailers may increasingly need commerce systems that can communicate directly with AI agents while preserving pricing control, customer data, brand identity, payment security and fulfillment rules.

Stripe is betting that this transition will happen quickly. The company said during Stripe Sessions 2026 that it expects AI agents eventually to account for a significant share of online transactions and is positioning its payments infrastructure accordingly.

E-commerce is moving beyond the website

The broader significance of Gaybrick's comments is not simply that checkout pages may become shorter or more convenient.

They suggest that the website itself could gradually lose its position as the central interface of digital commerce.

In an agentic-commerce environment, consumers may increasingly interact with AI assistants rather than individual retailer websites. Those agents could search across merchants, evaluate products, negotiate constraints and complete transactions without reproducing the traditional browsing journey.

The merchant remains responsible for the product, pricing, payment and fulfillment. But the interface connecting the merchant to the consumer may belong to someone else. That makes Stripe's prediction about the death of the checkout page part of a much larger transformation. The next era of e-commerce may not be defined by better checkout pages. It may be defined by commerce that no longer needs them.

The post Stripe says traditional checkout pages could disappear in the Agentic Commerce Era appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.