News Cart for October 23rd

Welcome back to the e-commerce newsroom! Stories we’ve been tracking since the last ECF News Cart include:

UPS has teamed up with Stamps.com. Walmart continues its push to gain e-commerce market share. And Amazon sued to shut down a couple of alleged get-rich-quick schemers.

You’ll also hear how Volusion got hacked, Snapchat debuted Dynamic Ads, and PayPal rolled out a Venmo credit card.

Get the details on these stories and more in the ECF News Cart for Oct. 23. You can also listen to this week’s roundup on the podcast via iTunes, Stitcher or the ECF Blog.

Happy Halloween!

– Andrew

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In the News:

Hackers Breach Volusion and Start Collecting Card Details From Thousands of Sites

• Hackers breached Volusion’s Google Cloud infrastructure and inserted malicious code that skims credit card details
• More than 6,500 stores impacted, but number could be as high as 20,000

UPS Partners With Stamps.com

• UPS to offer discounts to the 740,000 small and medium-sized businesses using Stamps.com, an online shipping software provider
• Stamps.com ended its longtime partnership with USPS in February 2019

Snapchat Introduces Dynamic Ads

• Dynamic Ads lets users automatically create mobile ads that target relevant audiences and sync to their product catalogues
• Open in beta for first few weeks for advertisers targeting U.S. customers

Walmart Spending at a Loss to Buy Grocery, e-Commerce Market Share

• Walmart’s same-day grocery subscription delivery service, Delivery Unlimited, expands to 200 markets this fall
• Competitive Price Adjustment program subsidizes the price of certain items sold by third-party merchants on its website, similar to Discounted by Amazon
• Both programs will likely be expensive for Walmart in the short run

Amazon Sues E-commerce ‘Coaches,’ Claiming They Taught Underhanded Tactics

• Two purported “coaches” charged customers between $4,000 and $10,000 to essentially learn how to swap fake reviews, according to the federal lawsuit
• Defendants were featured in The Atlantic’s January 2019 article “How to Lose Tens of Thousands of Dollars on Amazon”

PayPal Launches Venmo Credit Card

• PayPal and Synchrony Financial to roll out a Venmo co-branded credit card next year
• Cardholders can use and manage their accounts within the Venmo app, and can split and share purchases

Interesting Read:

Is Amazon Unstoppable? Politicians want to rein in the retail giant. But Jeff Bezos, the master of cutthroat capitalism, is ready to fight back. (New Yorker)

Cool Stuff My Friends Are Doing:

Can AI Run Your Email Marketing?  Noah and the Sumo team just launched something cool:  a tool that aims to automate your email marketing using AI to write your messages and create your layout. They’re planning on integrating with Klaviyo and other ESPs in the future to completely supercharge and automate your email workflow. Snag it for $50 for LIFE for the next few days here. (Not an affiliate link! Just a buddy launching something interesting.) 

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Post by Andrew Youderian

Andrew is the founder of eCommerceFuel and has been building eCommerce businesses ever since gleefully leaving the corporate world in 2008.  Join him and 1,000+ vetted 7- and 8-figure store owners inside the eCommerceFuel Community.