Black Friday and Cyber Monday have once again proved extremely strong for ecommerce, with Adobe Analytics reporting that consumers in the US alone spent around $34bn online over the four-day period – 1.4% below the record-breaking 2020. However, Shopify has provided some cross-border insights that suggest a growing willingness to make cross-border purchases.

Shopify saw total global sales of $6.3bn over the four-day period, a 23% increase on 2020, with 47 million consumers worldwide using merchants powered by the company.

Notably, 15% of orders were cross-border in 2021, up from 14% in 2020. The share remains below its peak of 19% in 2019, although this represented a smaller number of checkouts. This year Shopify also shared its biggest cross-border corridors for the first time, with US to Canada, Canada to US and UK to US being the most popular. 

Away from Shopify, while none of the other leading ecommerce players provided specific insights into their cross-border performance, PayPal did highlight successes in its buy now, pay later offering. CEO Dan Schulman told CNBC that BNPL saw a year-on-year increase of around 400%, with the company processing 750,000 BNPL transactions on Black Friday alone.

How does pricing impact cross-border ecommerce?

Lucy Ingham

LinkedIn

Lucy is VP of Content & Editor-in-Chief at FXC Intelligence, overseeing all content and taking deep dives into the trends and data driving changes in payments. Before joining FXC Intelligence, Lucy worked as a technology journalist and editor, interviewing CEOs and major names across enterprise technology, including fintech. She has an MSc in Development Anthropology from Durham University.