September 22nd, 2025: Google and Paypal Announce New Commerce Partnership, Andy Jasy Fireside Chat With Andy Jassy at Amazon Accelerate Conference, and The First Q4 Holiday Predictions Appear
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It’s September 22, 2025 and this is the Watson Weekly - your essential eCommerce Digest!
Today on our show:
Google and Paypal Announce New Commerce Partnership
Andy Jasy Fireside Chat With Andy Jassy at Amazon Accelerate Conference
The First Q4 Holiday Predictions Appear
- and finally, The Investor Minute which contains 5 items this week from the world of venture capital, acquisitions, and IPOs.
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To hear new episodes of the show every Monday morning, subscribe now at rmwcommerce.com/watsonweekly and wherever you get your podcasts.
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BUT FIRST in our shopping cart full of news….
Google and Paypal Announce New Commerce Partnership
In a headline which contains no small amount of hyperbole, Google and Paypal have announced a partnership to quote: revolution Commerce.
OK, so what is actually in the press release?
1 - Paypal will expand its relationship with Google Cloud to modernize its infrastructure.
2 - Paypal will become one of the key payment providers across the Google infrastructure like Google Ads, Cloud, and Google Play.
3 - Paypal will be embedded
4 - Paypal and Google are collaborating on agentic stuff. Not much detail here.
In short, this is kind of a nothingburger. Partnerships between big companies often amount to a big transfer of wealth from one company to another.
This reminds me of the huge even transformational partnership that FedEx announced with Microsoft some years ago. Oh, don’t remember this partnership do you? That’s because it didn’t produce anything either.
In this case, it seems to me that Paypal has agreed to pay Google a lot of money right now for access to its various platforms. And announced that it will commit Google a whole lot of money in the future to move a lot of its cloud infrastructure likely from on-premise (because that’s how old Paypal is) and their own dedicated hosting facilities into Google.
Bottom line, this amounts to the Internet’s greatest toll collector, Google, extracting a ton of cash out of Paypal. Some nice noises about agentic so that Paypal doesn’t feel left behind.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think Stripe is terribly worried about Paypal. They are just going to keep executing.
[References:]
Our Second Story
Andy Jassy Fireside Chat At Amazon Accelerate Conference
As I was listening to Andy Jassy’s keynote at Amazon’s Accelerate event, it strikes me that people covering the agentic space are missing one key component to commerce. And that is, commerce is logistics.
Meaning, if you can get the item to your consumer faster, you have a much better shot than your competitor of winning business across most categories of eCommerce.
If there was one song that was ringing in my head while listening to Andy’s presentation it was “Forgot About Dre”. Meaning?
The world while speaking about agents is forgetting what Amazon taught the world about eCommerce which will always be true. Sharp pricing across the widest assortment, delivered as fast as possible is the winning formula in eCommerce.
And whatever front-end you tend to put on things, ultimately the consumer will find their way back to buying it from the place that has those
Does anyone hear feel that sellers will take their items down from Amazon’s marketplace and be there instead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT marketplace (if they build one?)
Me neither. In that case, these chatbots need Amazon’s cooperation in the new world. And so Amazon is an underrated winner as we go forward here.
A few specific points:
Amazon rates its employees on their “YQ” meaning their ability to ask great “why” questions in order to innovate and invent.
Jassy spoke a lot about wanting to hire builders and owners, such that I thought I was almost listening to Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke for a moment. And it’s just a reminder of what Jeff Bezos has spoken about for a long time, and who Shopify is really emulating here.
The final point I would bring up from Andy Jassy’s presentation is “Speed is a Leadership Decision”. Speed is disproportionately important to every business at every stage and ultimately Amazon has avoide—d the slings and arrows of slow innovation that have affected its peers like eBay and Paypal over the years whose tech platforms seem to always be stuck in molasses.
Think about this, why do you think that Paypal’s UI have not improved in the past 15 years?
Why has Paypal Fastlane not taken off like a rocket ship?
The answer is simply - there is a lot of legacy baggage with implementations that newer players like Shopify and Stripe do not have.
This should be a lesson for everyone out there, and the thought about speed being important I definitely agree with from Andy Jassy.
[References:]
And Our Last Story
The First Q4 Holiday Predictions Appear
Another year, another holiday season is upon us folks and there are a new set of predictions. How the hell is it that Q4 is already upon us?
My short story with Q4 is simple. I think we are going to have a good one, because retailers simply cannot afford to have a bad one. Retailers will keep prices low despite tariffs and cost pressures because demand sensitivity will, well, demand it.
The alternative is much much worse. Keeping prices the same which amounts to raising prices which will tamp down volume, and necessitate some kind of severe markdown or liquidation later on.
8% growth year over year seems like the right number, led by Walmart being an outsized winner, followed by Amazon and some in specialty retail. The middle will continue get squeezed, but challenger brands can still win in this environment with the best content and community-driven approach.
With that said, let’s get to the predictions.
Bain & Company is predicting 4% growth in overall retail, while in-store grows 2.75% over last year. General merchandise should be above this however at around 5% or even higher. They predict eCommerce or non-store sales at 7%, as opposed to 9-10% a year the last couple of years.
This forecast falls slightly lower than the growth of the last 10 years. In other news, Bain reports that Black Friday and Cyber Monday could be unusually strong given the hyper-focus on sharp pricing. Interestingly, they are predicting that GenZ will cut their holiday spending by a quarter. It seems unlikely to me.
To me this all means that despite the holiday season opening in October, don’t expect strong demand until you unveil your sharpest pricing during the Cyber Days. This may sound the same as every year, but it seems to me that the peaks will be more pronounced due to unusually intense deal hunting on behalf of consumers, as well as better tools to do it with.
Deloitte similarly predicts a range of 7 to 9% for eCommerce, which is in line with last year’s growth.
At this time, all the numbers seem to be lining up in this range. The bear case for the holiday seems to focus on slightly declining personal disposable income, as well as the fact that GenZ is predicted to spend less this year based on reported surveys. However, anyone who trusts self-reported surveys should beware in my mind.
The consumer is still going to spend on friends, family and themselves because the discounts will be high and that will help the merchandise fly
[References:]
It’s That Time Friends, for our Investor Minute. We have 5 items on the menu today.
First
Accounting Automation Platform Rillet Raises $70M in Series B Funding
Automated accounting fintech platform Rillet has announced that it has raised $70 million in Series B funding that will be invested in product development and hiring of developers and talent.
Link: https://www.rillet.com/blog/rillet-raises-70m-series-b-from-andreessen-horowitz-and-iconiq
Second
Octup Raises $12M for Logistics Operations Management Platform
Octup, a real-time AI operations platform for third-party logistics providers and brands, has announced that it has raised $12 million in Seed funding. The funding will be used to hire talent, further product development, and to grow its North American market.
Link: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bklchepueg
Third
Descartes Buys Finale Inventory For $40M
Descartes has announced that it will acquire Finale Inventory, a cloud-based inventory management solution, for $40 million and a potential post-acquisition earnout of up to $15 million. Descartes is widening its solution and now has a solution for small and mid-sized e-commerce sellers.
Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/descartes-buys-e-commerce-inventory-131610582.html
Fourth
Salesforce to Acquire AI-Prospecting Platform Bluebird
Salesforce announced and closed the acquisition of the AI-prospecting platform Bluebird for an undisclosed amount. Bluebird will be added to Sales Cloud and Agentforce, and continues Salesforce's investment in AI.
Link: https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-bluebirds/
AND FINALLY …
3D Imaging Startup Cambridge Terahertz Raises $12M in Seed Funding
Human-safe 3D Imaging startup Cambridge Terahertz has raised $12 million in a seed funding round that will be used to expand its operations and further product development. Amazon’s $1 billion Industrial Innovation Fund invested in the round and will likely use the technology to mitigate fraudulent returns.
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Did you know that RMW Commerce has another podcast? Check out The Watson Weekend for an unfiltered and lively eCommerce chat each week with me, Rick Watson, my co-host Jess Lesesky, and an array of interesting guests and topics. All focused on eCommerce. You can find the Watson Weekend by searching for it on iTunes, Spotify, or Youtube.
That’s all for this week! Till next time Watsonians.....
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Hi, I’m Rick Watson, CEO and Founder of RMW Commerce Consulting and host of the Watson Weekly podcast - your essential eCommerce Digest.
To hear new episodes of the show every Monday morning, subscribe now at rmwcommerce.com/watsonweekly and wherever you get your podcasts.
