Global Marketing News – 14th July 2015
UK online spending has grown 221% in last 5 years
Visa Europe has released figures showing that online spending in the UK has grown by a staggering 221% in the last 5 years.
In 2010, British Visa cardholders spent just £37 billion online – the figure today is more like £120 billion. This means that online spending has grown on average by 39% each year, compared to a 25% yearly increase in physical transactions using Visa cards over the same time period.
One in every four pounds spent using a Visa card is now spent online, compared to one in five 5 years ago.
The data also revealed that over the last 5 years, £500 billion has been spent online using Visa cards, in around 7.6 billion separate transactions. This means that the average amount spent by British shoppers in one online transaction is £66.
Chinese taxi hailing app Didi Kuaidi raises $2 billion in funding
Uber’s biggest competitor in China, Didi Kuaidi, has raised 2 billion US dollars in its latest round of funding.
Alibaba, Tencent, Ping An Ventures and Capital International Private Equity Fund were named as some of the investors.
Didi Kuaidi is the leading taxi hailing app in China, where it has an estimated 80% of the market share.
It has recently seen substantial growth in its popularity in recent months, having jumped from 1 million rides a day in May to 3 million rides a day today.
Its competitor Uber also has plans to grow its presence in China, having announced that it wants to invest over 1 billion US dollars in its Chinese operations this year. Uber currently operates across 277 cities in over 50 countries worldwide.
ProSiebenSat.1 and Axel Springer discuss merger
The German media companies ProSiebenSat.1 and Axel Springer are in talks regarding a merger of the two businesses.
ProSiebenSat.1 owns a network of German TV channels worth 9.7 billion Euros, and has around a 30% of the German TV market.
Axel Springer owns the popular German newspaper Bild and also the news channel N24. It is worth an estimated 4.7 billion Euros.
Discussions surrounding the merger are currently at an early stage and are likely to face scrutiny from German regulatory and anti-competitiveness watchdogs.
Alibaba invests in Singapore Post Limited and Mei.com
The Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has announced several large investments in the last week, while the Chinese stock market has continued to fall.
Alibaba will invest 207 million US dollars in Singapore Post Limited, a postal and courier service that operates across the Asia Pacific region.
Alibaba hopes that investing in the logistics and delivery company will help to reduce the costs of sending items to shoppers, especially to customers based outside of China.
It will also invest an estimated 100 million US dollars in Mei.com, a popular luxury and fashion flash sales website that operates in Asia. Alibaba hopes that this investment will help it to sell more luxury goods in China.
Alibaba is one of the leading ecommerce companies in China. It has recently been withdrawing from Western markets as it seeks to solidify its position at home in Asia.
MasterCard to bring in selfie authentication for payments
And finally, MasterCard will soon allow users to authenticate mobile payments using selfies.
MasterCard already uses biometrics as a security method for mobile payments, with users currently allowed to use their fingerprints to authenticate their identities before making payments.
With selfie authentication, users would look into their phone camera at eye-level and blink once. The blink requirement is in place to stop fraudsters from simply holding up a photograph of a person in front of the camera to get access to their account.
Selfie authentication will not be rolled out immediately, however. Testing involving 500 customers will take place first to identify and fix any issues before the scheme is rolled out more widely. It is not clear how the system would cope with cases of identical twins.
Webcertain’s global marketing news bulletins are daily 5-minute videos, providing marketers with the latest international digital marketing news in an easy-to-digest format.
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Immanuel Simonsen
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