EBay Boss Says Holiday Shopping Now Starts Before Thanksgiving (and on Mobile)
*By Bridgette Webb*
In more than 20 years of business, eBay has grown to become the globe's second largest online retailer, with 177 million active buyers worldwide in 190 markets.
The company, in terms of online sales will have more online transactions than Walmart, Macy's($M) and Best Buy ($BBY) combined, according to company estimates.
It's a stat that the company hopes will propel it to success on what is poised to be the biggest shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday.
"We are building on incredible momentum from last week," Scott Cutler, eBay's SVP for the Americas said Monday on an interview on Cheddar. "We are expecting an amazing day across the array of products that eBay has to offer."
The annual online event is set to become the largest ー and fastest ー growing shopping days of the year ,according to Adobe Analytics data, which expects the annual event to hit $7.7 billion dollars in sales, marking an over 17 percent increase from last year.
According to Cutler, the fervor surrounding both Cyber- Monday and Black Friday has spread to the days before Thanksgiving, ultimately presenting a new opportunity for mobile payments. He said the site saw serious traffic even before the national holiday ー and then again on Black Friday.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
