This Week in M&A Issue #209

Not all Amazon marketplaces are created equal.

While the U.S. often grabs the spotlight with $305 billion in third-party GMV, raw volume doesn’t tell the full story. Success depends on a mix of factors like revenue potential, customer traffic, long-term seller survival, and how quickly new sellers can get started.

A new Amazon Marketplaces Trends Report by Marketplace Pulse looks beyond GMV, analyzing eleven major marketplaces using seven key metrics: average seller earnings, traffic per seller, longevity, geographic diversity, revenue balance, new-seller success, and speed to scale. Combining these into a Total Opportunity Score that highlights where sellers can build sustainable, profitable businesses.

The U.S., unsurprisingly, tops the list, with nearly 548,000 active sellers earning $557,000 each on average. Its huge traffic, 2.69 billion monthly visits, makes niche products viable. Around 60% of new sellers make their first sale within a year, showing how accessible the market can be.

Japan, despite its $12.8 billion GMV (eighth globally), ranks second due to exceptional seller sustainability. 15% of sellers active five years ago are still operating, compared with just 7.8% in the U.S. High customer engagement, nearly 4,000 visits per seller, favors sellers who adapt to local culture, creating strong, defensible positions over time.

Germany ranks third with $50.8 billion GMV across 151,435 sellers, producing $335,175 per seller. Navigating its regulatory complexity prepares sellers to expand into other European markets.

The U.K., despite Brexit challenges, delivers high revenue, $341,961 per seller, and acts as a strategic English-speaking entry point to the EU.

Canada rounds out the top five, with modest GMV but strong longevity and a traffic-constrained environment ideal for careful, optimized growth.

The opportunity isn’t just about size. Markets with efficient traffic, balanced revenue distribution, and strong new-seller support consistently produce better results than large but concentrated markets. Sellers who look beyond GMV can find long-term, profitable niches across the globe.

Wix merchants are about to gain a major edge in online visibility and sales thanks to a new partnership with PayPal.

Wix will be one of the first eCommerce platforms to integrate with PayPal’s agentic commerce solution, a new system that enables shopping and payments directly inside AI platforms.

This means Wix sellers will soon be able to make their products discoverable on AI-driven channels like Perplexity and PayPal’s own shopping agent, currently in testing. Shoppers will be able to find, browse, and buy items directly through AI chatbots and digital assistants, without ever leaving the conversation, using PayPal’s trusted checkout system.

For Wix sellers, the setup is designed to be simple and seamless. PayPal’s system will automatically connect product data, manage payments, and provide identity verification, fraud protection, and buyer safeguards.

Importantly, Wix sellers will remain the merchant of record, maintain their branding, and handle all customer communications, ensuring they keep ownership of the customer relationship.

This announcement builds on Wix’s growing ecosystem of eCommerce tools. Earlier this year, Wix added PayPal directly into its Wix Payments platform, giving merchants a unified dashboard to manage all transactions. The company also partnered with Pinterest to let sellers promote and sell products directly through the social platform.

Enrollment for the new store sync feature will open soon. Product discovery on Perplexity is expected before the end of 2025, followed by PayPal’s agentic payment rollout in early 2026.

Google is rolling out a new version of its Merchant Center built specifically for marketing agencies.

The platform, called Merchant Center for Agencies, is designed for teams managing multiple ecommerce clients. Replacing the older Multi-Client Account (MCA) system, it brings all accounts together under one clean, centralized dashboard, saving time and boosting visibility across campaigns.

The new dashboard gives agencies a centralized view of all their clients’ Merchant Center accounts, including summary statistics, account health diagnostics, and alerts for major changes in performance metrics like clicks or disapprovals. Google says the platform improves operational efficiency by saving teams one to two hours per week through its simplified, single-view setup.

Agencies can now “star” priority clients, manage user permissions, and get instant access to performance data across all accounts. The platform also highlights issues, like product feed errors or policy violations, before they escalate into account suspensions, helping teams take corrective action early.

Beyond basic management, the new Merchant Center offers optimization insights by analyzing factors such as shipping options, returns, and customer purchase experiences. These insights help agencies identify ways to improve listings and drive better results for their clients.

To access Merchant Center for Agencies, new users can request an account through Google’s Contact Us form, while existing users can simply log in to their merchant account, where the updated agency account will appear as the default view.