Amazon Prime Day will be June 21-22, reported Bloomberg, after COVID-19 challenges pushed the company's signature sales event to October last year from its typical July slot. Amazon notified employees of the scheduling and asked them to keep it confidential, said the Wednesday report. Prime Day 2020, held Oct. 13-14, was seen as the unofficial start to the holiday sales season in an atypical year for retail. Amazon confirmed the June timing in its last earnings call (see 2104300039), but it didn’t respond to questions Thursday.

Ingram Micro launched Amazon Web Services on its Mexico cloud marketplace for its reseller network there, it said Thursday. It follows the announcement of a global strategic collaboration agreement with AWS in March and recent launches in Australia and New Zealand. More announcements are expected this year.

Amazon is rolling Prime Now into the Amazon app for a more “seamless” shopping experience, blogged Vice President-Grocery Stephenie Landry Friday. The Amazon shopping app also wraps in Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods and local stores, she said. The company will sunset the Prime Now website and app at year-end. Consumers can use the Amazon app for shopping, tracking orders and contacting customer service, she said.

Amazon's continued hiring blitz is a “bullish indicator,” Cowen analyst John Blackledge wrote investors Friday. The company recruited 500,000 new employees last year to keep pace with the COVID-19 “pandemic-driven demand surge” and to help staff a 50% increase in its fulfillment and logistics network, he said. Amazon's continued investment in fulfillment head count “underlines the continued strong eCommerce demand,” said the analyst. Cowen’s April consumer tracker survey showed 34% of 2,500 respondents increased their online spending, consistent with 35% in March. Cowen is “especially encouraged by the strong eCommerce spending in spite of respondents’ increased comfort around returning to physical venues.”

An Amazon Photos services outage that began Tuesday prevented North American accounts from “uploading and viewing photos and videos through our apps,” the company emailed customers Thursday. “Our services are now fully restored. Please be assured that your content is safe and secure.” Amazon didn’t respond to questions about what caused the outage.

Just 6% of attempted new seller account registrations passed Amazon’s verification processes and listed products, blogged Dharmesh Mehta, vice president-customer trust and partner support, Sunday, referencing the company’s first brand protection report. The e-commerce giant uses machine learning and “expert human review” to protect the digital store “proactively from bad actors and bad products,” said Mehta. He cited an “escalating battle with criminals” who attempt to sell counterfeit products on Amazon and noted the company’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit, established last year, which holds counterfeiters responsible through litigation. It began displaying U.S. sellers’ business names and addresses on their Amazon seller profile page, something it was already doing in Europe, Mexico and Japan; it will expand the display of seller contact information to all stores globally this year. Selling partners are required to provide a government-issued photo ID and information about their identity, location, taxpayer information and financial information, said the report. Amazon prevented more than 6 million attempts to create new selling accounts and blocked more than 10 billion suspected bad listings before they were published on the marketplace, it said. The e-tailer seized and destroyed more than 2 million products sent to its fulfillment centers that were detected as being counterfeit before they were sent on to a customer, Amazon said.

PayPal believes the “shift” in consumer behavior to e-commerce will stay “essentially unchanged in a post-COVID world,” said CEO Dan Schulman on a Q1 call Wednesday. “Consumers have expanded their digital lives into a seamless online and off-line experience.” Shaping a future “where everyone can participate fully in this new digital paradigm has never been more important,” he said. PayPal transactions in the quarter reached about 4.4 billion, growing 34% year over year, said Schulman. It added 14.5 million net new active accounts, ending the quarter with 392 million, up 21% from Q1 2020, he said. It expects to exceed 400 million active accounts by the end of Q2, he said.

Shopify reported strong Q1 revenue performance, with gross merchandise value (GMV) growing across all geographies on “robust consumer spending,” said President Harley Finkelstein on a Wednesday call. Revenue grew 110% to $988.6 million, with about $321 million coming from subscriptions, just under $668 million from merchants, said the company. Though U.S. stimulus programs had an impact on revenue, GMV “was strong even without it,” said Chief Financial Officer Amy Shapero, saying GMV outside of the U.S. accelerated at a faster pace. Q1 revenue exceeded Q4 revenue, “a remarkable achievement” given the typical seasonal falloff after the holiday selling season, Shapero said. Markets that opened post-pandemic, including Australia and New Zealand, aren’t slowing down, said Finkelstein, saying online GMV remains elevated: “So I don't think the consumer preference shift that happened through COVID was a temporary thing.” Multichannel selling is becoming “more critical as the costs of customer acquisition climbs and the lines blurred between online and offline commerce,” said Finkelstein. In the quarter, Shopify expanded its TikTok partnerships to an additional 14 countries and broadened its Pinterest channel by 27 markets, he said. The company launched in-app buy buttons. It integrated Shop Pay as a checkout option with merchants selling on Facebook shops and Instagram Checkout. Lord & Taylor launched on Shopify in the quarter. Finkelstein noted it was America's first department store, founded in 1826, and said it’s “exciting to see their value proposition evolve into an excellent mobile and social experience" and to build on a future-looking platform "experiences that haven't even been thought of yet.” Shopify has under 30% e-commerce penetration in North America, slightly higher in the U.K., said the executive: “There's so much headroom, and there's so much room for e-commerce to grow.” As countries roll out vaccines in 2021 and populations can move about more freely, "the overall economic environment will likely improve," Shopify said. "Some consumer spending will likely rotate back to offline retail and services, and the ongoing shift to e-commerce, which accelerated in 2020, will likely resume a more normalized pace of growth." Shares closed 11.4% higher at $1,288.80.

Adobe and FedEx began a multiyear collaboration that will start by integrating the ShopRunner e-commerce platform with Adobe Commerce, said the companies Tuesday. The partnership will give Adobe merchants access to FedEx “post-purchase logistics intelligence,” helping them drive demand, reduce costs and gain “customer insights,” they said. E-commerce with the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns “became a make-or-break capability for every company regardless of size or industry,” said the companies. FedEx completed its ShopRunner buy in December with the goal of playing a "larger role" in e-commerce (see 2012280031).

Amazon expanded its Key by Amazon in-garage grocery delivery, launched in November (see 2011120031), to more than 5,000 U.S. localities, it said Tuesday. Amazon Prime members can have groceries from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods delivered inside their garage if they have a compatible opener or myQ Smart Garage Hub ($29.98). Users select “key delivery” at online checkout, a “trained shopper” fills the order and the items are delivered by a “delivery service professional,” it said. Shoppers are notified by app with an “arriving now” message. The driver opens the garage with a handheld scanner, and Amazon verifies that the package belongs to that address -- and that the driver is close to the garage door -- before opening it, said an Amazon FAQs page. Drivers are trained to place the package just inside the garage, out of the driving path, and then to close the door with their mobile device. Once the delivery is complete and the garage door is closed, customers receive a final notification. A camera is optional for the service; compatible cameras from Ring and myQ allow customers to view deliveries as they happen, it said.