Economist.com published an article about the state of Egyptian e-commerce.

"Egypt should be fertile ground for e-commerce. Hellish traffic in its cities and an undeveloped retail sector in many parts of the country make online shopping an attractive option. And Egyptians have long been accustomed to having things delivered, particularly food. In medieval times fires used to heat the public baths also served to cook foul, a traditional dish of brown beans, which was then dispatched to locals. Today many convenience stores, pharmacists, tailors and even hairdressers are in the delivery business."

"Yet e-commerce currently generates only 0.3% of Egypt’s retail sales—much less than in other countries in the Middle East¸ according to the Boston Consulting Group. The cultural proclivity for delivery seems to be overwhelmed by practical problems: internet speeds are slow, few people have bank accounts let alone credit cards and digital literacy is low. Still, online revenues are expected to grow—even with the country in political turmoil."

"One reason is better infrastructure and more experience: internet penetration has more than doubled to nearly 40% in the 90m-strong country since 2011. The share of internet users who have shopped online has risen from 1.4% to 8.7%. But Facebook, which helped bring about Egypt’s revolution three years ago, may be a more powerful factor: with about 15m "friends", the social network now has three times as many users in the country as it did before the Arab spring."

"Egyptians are also among the world’s most highly engaged Facebookers: they “like” more, share more and click more on advertising than many fellow netizens. This makes ads on the social network very cost-effective. “Amid Egypt’s dire economic situation every dollar counts,” says Sara Metwally, boss of StarcomMediaVest, part of Publicis, a French advertising group."

"“Word-of-mouth marketing is especially important here,” says Sherif Barakat, head of Samsung’s division for hand-held products in Egypt. According to a 2010 study by McKinsey, a consultancy, recommendations from friends are the most important factor in purchase decisions in developing countries."

"Samsung’s Facebook page is the most popular in Egypt, boasting 4.7m “likes”. “Facebook users are the opinion leaders when it comes to technology,” says Mr Barakat. The Korean electronics maker expects online sales in Egypt, which today account for 5% of its total revenues in the country, to grow to 20% by the end of 2015, boosted in large part by the firm’s Facebook page, which links to affiliated online retailers.".

"Ironically, further political turmoil in Egypt could be a boon for e-commerce. Lack of security and night-time curfews following the ousting of President Muhammad Morsi last summer has already provided a boost, says Omar al-Sahi, the country head of Souq.com, the region’s biggest online retailer. Sales spiked after the curfew was introduced in August, he reports. But even when it was lifted in November, many stuck with online shopping. “If you provide Egyptians with good service they will never leave you,” explains Mattia Perroni, chief executive of Jumia in Egypt."

According to this, marketing analytics firm Custora says US e-commerce sales were up eight percent this January over January 2013.

"While combined offline and online transactions were down 0.4 percent last month compared to a year ago, Custora claims January was a strong month for e-commerce, with a 6 percent increase in traffic to e-commerce stores."

"Based on e-commerce transactions from over 100 retailers and 70 million shoppers, Custora’s data also revealed a slight increase in the average conversion rate last month, holding at 2.2 percent compared to 2.1 percent in January 2013."

"Mobile accounted for a third of January’s online transactions according to Custora. The company’s data revealed 20 percent of online orders occurred on an Android device, up 6 percent from last January when 14 percent of orders were made on an Android."

"Custora’s data also showed January’s Average Order Value (AOV) climbed 1.3% over January 2013′s AOV numbers."

"“This indicates that the e-commerce environment remained stable and did not become more promotional and discount-driven compared to last year,” reported Custora on its company blog."

Crossborder-ecommerce.com published an article about threat of fraud in alternative payments.

"The transaction revenue of alternative payments today accounts for $212 billion of eCommerce payments globally and a recent WorldPay report shows that they will become increasingly important in the next couple of years. Markus Rinderer, CEO at PAY.ON, and Kieran Mongey, Senior Fraud Consultant at ReD, share the opinion that, the alternative payments landscape is complex and, with the challenge of evaluating which alternative payment method should be implemented in each market, the threat of fraud in alternative payments must also be considered."

"While the level of fraud in alternative payments is currently low compared with card fraud, it should not be ignored. Tactics deployed by fraudsters against alternative payments include network and phishing attacks, and money laundering. Network attacks have been a successful tactic used by fraudsters, mainly because some payment methods do not use a “checksum” tool. This enables fraudsters to manipulate and freeze the URL between a payment provider and a merchant, so enabling manipulation of payment vouchers."

"Phishing has also become more prevalent as some payment methods do not enforce second-factor authentication. This allows fraudsters to hack into accounts using key-logging software and to glean information about passwords and account details that have been entered by the consumer. Fraudsters have also been successful in laundering money through wallet type structures via B2B or B2C relationships within the wallet. This can be difficult to detect and may leave victims exposed to fraudulent websites and without protection from fraudulent purchases."

"In order to prevent fraud in alternative payments, PSPs/ISOs and merchants should cross-check reference and account details in order to identify any anomalies. Many alternative payment methods are processing transactions through in-house rules and scoring engines today. This will ultimately drive declines much like bank declines, so how does this impact conversion, customer experience and merchants competitive position in terms of payment acceptance? And how does this align to the costs of processing alternative payments? All these considerations must be aligned to the risk exposure these solutions represent."

"The key consideration from a fraud perspective is that the fraudster will always find the weakest link. If merchants’ strategies are card centric, it will not be long before the fraudster identifies and leverages this. A fraud strategy should be payment agnostic and rely more closely on peripheral data held and exposed by the fraudster. This then becomes the key decision-making element of rules. Device, IP, connection, delivery, amount, product and history data is critical for exposing and detecting fraudsters. The payment mechanism is often the fastest changing piece of data within the payments landscape. A card, a wallet ID or payment method can frequently be changed – while a delivery address will change far less frequently."

"Merchants, PSPs/ISOs should not allow fraudsters to jump from cards to alternative payment methods and so by-pass their traditional card centric rules and expose their alternative payment strategy to increased fraud."

According to DigitalDoghnout, the European Union has passed a new directive on consumer rights that will have a major impact on most, if not all, ecommerce businesses.

"The main elements of this new legislation are designed to protect consumers and also provide added competition between enterprises. The directive is basically designed to align rights across the 27 EU member states, while providing more clarity on the way consumer rights are defined."

"1. An extension to the cooling off window

The first change of note in the UK that the directive dictates is the ‘cooling off window’ (the time in which the consumer can cancel their order), is to be increased from the current seven working days to 14 calendar days, thus bringing it in line with many other members of the EU including Germany who already provide this for consumers. The directive also states that a consumer can cancel the order and return the goods for any reason."

"2. Changes to refund process

Consumers will have 14 calendar days following the purchase date in which they are eligible for a refund for returned goods. Potentially the most controversial part of the directive is that a refund for the standard delivery option must also be included when paid. That being said one saving grace is that businesses do not have to refund the delivery cost until they have received the goods back from the consumer. The changes to refunds incorporate more detail including how to handle returns that are damaged due to unreasonable care."

"3. An end to pre-ticked opt-in boxes

Although having pre-ticked opt-in boxes has been a frowned-upon practice for quite a while now, it still happens. The new directive will put an end to this. The legislation defines that it will no longer be acceptable for websites to contain pre-ticked boxes that cross sell of offer ‘extras’ during the sales process."

"4. No more ‘Buy Now’ buttons

Confirm order buttons at the end of a checkout process will need a radical change according to the directive’s documentation. Currently the usual best practice is to have a button stating ‘Confirm Order’ or ‘Buy Now’. Under the new legislation this will no longer be sufficient. These buttons will need to provide context and make it clear that a contractual agreement is being entered into. The regulation itself highlights a suggestion for the content of the buttons as “Order with obligation to pay”. As an experienced conversion optimisation strategist this is the change that I’m looking forward to the least. Getting users to commit to purchasing online has enough challenges as it is and adding in this extra dimension is only going to make the process appear more committal, which could confuse consumers. The EU is attempting to safeguard consumers from buying or entering into a contract that they didn’t want in the first place with this change – which I can sympathise with. However this change will mean companies will have to need think hard about what copy and context they want the content to portray while managing anxieties and additional questions that this could bring about."

"5. When it will come into effect

June 13 this year is the date you need to circle on your calendar. The directive was actually passed in December 2012 but the changes mooted in the document will not become law until this summer. There are a lot of changes in this directive and it is not realistic to highlight everything here but if you want to find out more about the new legislation see here."

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"] Source Brandignity[/caption]