According to research by Digital Commerce 360, by 2024, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of global marketplaces will increase by 10%. One of the reasons for this momentum is customer demand for the convenience of shopping and the variety of products that marketplaces can offer.

Indeed, expanding internationally brings a number of benefits, opening up new opportunities and access to new revenue flows. However, it also presents a number of logistical challenges and risks.

In this article, we will take a closer look at examples of online marketplaces that have successfully made the leap to international markets, and offer tips on how you can do the same.

How Define the Global Marketplace?

What is the global marketplace? In the eCommerce field, the global marketplace is an online retail platform for the exchange of goods and services that is not restricted by international borders. The marketplace owner is responsible for top-level management, securing user data, and ensuring a constant flow of buyers and suppliers.

Some companies extend their influence literally to the entire available worldwide market. For example, Alibaba, Shein or Ebay. Others are smaller but still reach beyond their own regions, like Poshmark, which operates in the US, Canada and Australia.

Which countries are the most profitable for the expansion of your business? According to research for 2023, countries with the largest market share of sales through eCommerce are China, Indonesia, United Kingdom, South Korea, and the United States.

*Top-10 countries with the highest percentage of retail sales taking place online. Source:* *Statista*

What Are The Advantages Of The Global Marketplace?

A dynamically developing eCommerce business will sooner or later face the need for expansion and growth. One possible scenario for this is to enter the global marketplace space. This is not an easy task for business owners, but it remains promising for a number of reasons:

High profitability. Products that are sold for a small amount inside your country can cost many times more abroad (building materials, cosmetics, equipment).
Low competition for a number of products. Foreign manufacturers cannot always offer substitutes of products or services from a particular country. An excellent example would be cosmetics from South Korea, which now set trends of the beauty industry, or high quality Japanese-made electronics. If your product is exceptional for whatever reason, it will be in demand or at least find a niche in the global marketplaces field.
Opportunity to scale your business. If you have mastered the market of one of the European, African or Asian countries, it will be easier to gain access to neighboring markets in the same region.
Low competition with local producers and sellers. Many entrepreneurs in your country probably do not yet work with a global audience. This requires investment and involves a lot of hassle. For example, if you are going to sell products abroad that you do not manufacture, you will need to check for trademark rights, obtain customs clearance to export the products, and organize logistics. You will also need to communicate in a foreign language with suppliers, customers, authorities, tax authorities and other services. But while some people see these difficulties as stop factors, others see it as a time to successfully build a business within isolation from competitors.

Challenges of Entering the Global Marketplace

Despite the fact that marketplaces relieve sellers of organizational responsibilities and provide many ready-made tools for selling, do not underestimate the challenges of doing business within a global marketplace.

High competition. Thousands and millions of sellers on top online marketplaces competing for buyers’ attention.
High commissions. The more marketplace involved in your business, the higher commission will be. With a full-field marketplace, it can be as high as 30-40% of the seller’s total revenue.
Delivery problems. When sending goods abroad, there may be problems with customs clearance, which in turn will lead to delivery disruptions and a negative experience for the customer.

World’s Most Popular Online Marketplaces

Let’s move on to illustrative examples of top online marketplaces that have reached the maximum audience demand worldwide. Simtech Development experts have studied the latest SimilarWeb summary and are ready to present the top 10 largest marketplaces in the world, which unite millions of users and process thousands of transactions daily.

Amazon

An American merchant platform with more than thirty years of history. Amazon global marketplace has 300 million customers worldwide and 1,9 million active shoppers.

Amazon offers two monetization options to its vendors:

Individual: for each item sold, sellers are charged 8-25% of the purchase amount (the percentage depends on the category) with a maximum of 40 sold items per month.
Professional: sellers will have to pay about $39,99 per month, but in return Amazon provides more advanced options: no sales limit, direct access to analytics, independent store administration and so on.

In this way, Amazon combines its own monetization through a commission model and a subscription model.

eBay

The second most visited global eCommerce marketplace with 133 million active users and 18 million sellers worldwide (as of the third quarter of 2024). Compared to Amazon, eBay has a lower entry threshold for vendors and less bureaucracy.

eBay was launched in the mid-1990s as an online auction of used goods and was intended to work with individuals primarily. Just like back then, sellers can enter the platform as individuals only. Connecting a business account is an extra option, provided by a paid subscription of $27,95 per month.

Stores and showcases are managed via Seller Hub, an admin panel available to every seller for free. Using it sellers can manage listings and orders, get analytics, work with tax deductions and SEO metrics.

eBay, one of the largest online marketplaces, is monetized through a commission-based model:

Commission fee each ad placed on the site—price is about 50 cents, the first 50 products are published for free.
Commission fee 13,25% on each purchase plus a flat fee of $0,30 per order.

Rakuten

Rakuten is a global selling platform that was created in Japan in 1997 and thus far is considered one of the most popular in the world. It offers the widest range of goods and services—from stationery to industrial equipment; from babysitting services to booking golf courses.

Today, it has more than 105 million users and 2,5 million vendors. Each seller is paired with a consultant whose duties include verifying the business and authenticity of the vendor’s products, as well as approving one of the monetization options:

Monthly subscriptions.
A fee per unit of each product sold.
A fee per product category (5% to 14% of the total product price).

Alibaba

A Chinese global B2B marketplace with more than 26 million registered businesses from around the world. The platform is specialized in the sale of wholesale products and offers access to more than 100 million products from more than 200 thousand sellers. Alibaba is available in 190 countries and serves at least 160 million shoppers around the world.

To start your business on Alibaba, you need to:

Register on the site
Complete beginner’s tutorial.
Pay an annual subscription, that could vary from $1400 to $6000.

Alibaba does not offer delivery services and warehouses, targeting big businesses that can cover their own needs.

Etsy

Etsy is a marketplace created in the United States in 2005 to sell and buy handmade goods (knitted children’s clothing, jewelry, artwork, vintage products and so on). Etsy has 90 million buyers whose goal is to buy exclusive, nonrepeatable goods.

The marketplace has about 6,6 million sellers: artists, craftsmen, designers, jewelers. They pay Etsy $0,20 per item listing and a 6,5% commission on each sale.

Temu

Temu global online marketplace also appeared in China and quickly established itself as an alternative to Aliexpress. Bypassing traditional distribution channels, the platform works directly with Chinese manufacturers, thus ensuring the cheapest possible cost of goods.

In order to operate on Temu, sellers need to:

Sign-up
Upload their product catalog and information
Wait for an approval period of 3-5 days (priority is given to Pinduoduo members)

Flipkart

The second largest platform among the top marketplaces in India, and a member of the global top-10. Flipkart was founded by former Amazon employees in 2007.

The procedure for sellers registering and model of marketplace monetization is similar to Amazon. Though only Indian individuals and companies can sell goods through Flipkart. Foreign manufacturers and brands can only sell through local Indian companies.

Taobao

Among all popular marketplaces, Taobao stands out due to its cheap prices. The marketplace sells both goods directly from manufacturers and from intermediary stores, as well as second-hand items. The sale is possible at a fixed price and through an auction.

To register on the marketplace, sellers need to open a checking account in a Chinese bank and then register in the AliPay payment service. This will require a fee of CNY 1,000 for a legal entity, registering as an individual is free.

The marketplace charges a commission on sales transactions and the use of additional features: banner and targeted advertising, the appearance of sellers’ products in recommendations, and taobaoke, i.e. referral links to product pages.

Shopee

Shopee is one of the leading digital marketplaces in Southeast Asia. Started as a C2C (customer to customer) platform, it has evolved into a B2C (business-to-consumer) marketplace, reaching buyers across the region.

Regardless of which country sellers want to work in (the global marketplace has 8 priority countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Korea), it is necessary to get confirmation from Shopee. To do this, sellers need to fill out a special form, register on the platform and get access to the administrative panel.

The platform is monetized through a commission from each transaction, using the split method. As well as a paid subscription Shopee Preferred Seller, which allows sellers to attract more buyers and expand presence on the site by additional advertising, increased sales limit and so on.

Mercari

Mercari is called the largest “flea market” service originating from Japan. This platform is especially popular among other eCommerce marketplaces due to the opportunity to buy unique collectible goods: k-pop items, collectible cards, figurines, as well as branded clothes from local designers. The marketplace trades both new items directly from sellers and used items from users.

Entering the marketplace requires registration, identity verification, and waiting for Mercari to accept the seller or user. The marketplace is monetized through commission per listing, as well as takes a commission for each transaction.

Biggest American Marketplaces

The U.S. is considered the cradle of global marketplace trends—here the “three pillars” of global eCommerce were born: Amazon, eBay and Etsy. But this is by no means the entirety of the American eCommerce market. Let’s take a look at a list of online marketplaces with no less important players.

Walmart

A multi-product marketplace created in 2009 after the American company of the same name, with a network of 11,000 retail stores worldwide, launched online sales.

Walmart has around 265 million shoppers and 70,000 salespeople. To start selling on the marketplace you need to pass an interview, and test tasks.

The platform charges a commission for each sale made (8%-15% depending on the product category), as well as a monthly fee of $10 for account maintenance.

Best Buy

The largest U.S. marketplace to emerge from classic retail. It specializes in electronics and home goods, offering televisions, computers, tablets, game consoles, smartphones and gadget accessories. Also operates the Best Buy Mobile and Insignia brands in North America, and Five Star in China.

Best Buy also sells services, including appliance installation and maintenance, product selection advice, and technical support via phone call or e-mail.

The site has approximately 160 million buyers and 50 thousand sellers, who pay the marketplace a commission of approximately 15% for each item sold.

Mercado Libre

Largest eCommerce marketplace in Latin America for buying and selling goods and services in categories such as electronics, fashion, beauty, sports and more. Founded in 1999 in Argentina, it now operates in 18 countries for 76 million users and 12 million sellers.

MercadoLibre makes money from commissions on sales, advertising and user services. Fees range from 5% to 20% of the transaction.

Zibbet

A platform that brings together artists, artisans and designers offering handmade and vintage goods. The platform takes a token 5% commission on sales, plus a small monthly fee to use the platform.

Zibbet suggests that it can integrate with other platforms such as Etsy, Amazon, and Shopify to increase audience reach and sales.

Discogs

The world’s best marketplace for music records and electronic music, founded in 2000. It sells vinyl records and CDs. It has an audience of 13 million users and 60,000 sellers. Both buy an annual subscription to the marketplace.

Besides, sellers pay a commission of 8% of the sale from each transaction.

Largest European Online Marketplaces

The European Union (excluding the UK) is the third place for biggest online marketplaces in the world with total online sales of $498 billion per year.

In addition to Amazon and eBay, Europe has a huge number of other successful online marketplaces. However, unlike the global giants, European marketplaces began their activities exclusively as local sites. Over time, thanks to close proximity and collaboration with neighboring countries, they turned into international ones.

Allegro

Polish marketplace with a wide range of products from food to cars. Leading the list of European top marketplaces, Allegro is extremely popular in its homeland and is gradually expanding to other nearby countries.

Today, the site has about 21 million registered buyers and more than 100 thousand sellers. For the latter, the site only takes a commission on sales with no additional payments.

Joom

Latvian marketplace with headquarters in Riga. The company strives to work directly with manufacturers to ensure high quality of goods.

Its main advantages within other most popular online marketplaces are a well-promoted mobile application adapted to 21 languages and fast delivery, which is handled by its own company, Joom Logistics.

The site has more than 400 million users and 200 thousand sellers. Among the monetization models: commissions (5%-15%), advertising promotion, purchase insurance, currency conversion.

Zalando

A German-origin global fashion marketplace founded in 2008 in Berlin. Today it is perceived as a place where you can find the most stylish and ultra-fashionable things.

Zalando started as an online store, but switched to a marketplace model in 2013. The platform has more than 48 million active customers in 23 countries, and about 2 million manufacturer sellers.

The marketplace primarily earns commissions from sellers’ sales, delivery and packaging services. It also monetizes through additional services such as style advice and loyalty programs for users who want to stay up-to-date with new trends and have early access to exclusive collections.

Cdiscount

French-origin global marketplace with 8.6 million active buyers. The platform offers more than 40 million products, including electronics, home accessories, sporting goods, apparel and more.

Like most mentioned global marketplace examples, Cdiscount monetizes through sales commissions, advertising services, and offers product quality assurance and insurance.

Decathlon

Another example of an international marketplaces—a French platform that specializes in sports equipment for football, basketball, golf, skiing, cycling and swimming.

Decathlon offers the possibility to buy not only mass-produced products, but also make individual orders. For example, suits for team games or camping equipment. Similar to its European counterparts, this global marketplace earns money through commissions, advertising and additional services for sellers and buyers.

Popular Asian Marketplaces

Asian platforms are the most dynamic and fastest growing eCommerce representatives in the world’s online marketplace field. They offer a wide range of goods, from electronics and fashionable clothing to food and cosmetics.

What is interesting is that their focus remains on the needs of local buyers, rather than European or American ones. Besides, thanks to Asian sellers, buyers have been able to discover a huge number of previously unknown, exotic goods for fairly low prices.

AliExpress

A Chinese marketplace launched by Alibaba Group in 2010. Today, the site has more than 200 million monthly active users and 300,000 sellers from all over the world. AliExpress is definitely the leader of the top marketplaces in the world.

AliExpress attracts vendors with low commissions, 5%-8% of the transaction amount. There are also favorable conditions for newcomers: vendors do not pay commission for the first 100 products or the first six months of their sellings. It is also possible not to pay remuneration to the marketplace if the seller attracts traffic to his AliExpress store through advertising, social networks or mailings.

AliExpress is very popular worldwide, and for this reason many sellers or representatives of small eCommerce companies open stores on this platform.

Lazada

Amazon’s counterpart in Southeast Asia, a division of Alibaba Group, focusing on Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia.

One of Lazada’s key strategies is to combine entertainment with shopping. The platform practices live broadcasting concerts, as well as online gamification to attract customers. Not surprisingly, the online store has more than 150 million customers and more than 10 million sellers, earning money from sales commissions.

Daraz

Pakistani multi-product global marketplace for selling goods and services in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan. The marketplace was launched in 2012 and now has 50,000 users.

Since 2018, Daraz has been part of the global holding company Alibaba Group, allowing it to leverage advanced technology and expertise in handling large amounts of data.

Daraz earns its profits from commissions on sales, advertising to promote sellers, and delivery of orders to buyers.

DMM

DMM is included in the top-30 best online marketplaces in the world and offers a wide range of goods and services. The main directions are the online store of both physical and digital goods: TV series, anime, e-books and so on.

The second area of services on the marketplace is the rental and purchase of video on demand. DMM company was founded in 1999 and the first online store was opened in 2002.

This global marketplace is monetized through a commission on listings as well as a payout per each transaction.

DhGate

A global marketplace established in China. It focuses on the wholesale sellings and works in two directions: as a B2B global marketplace and B2C, allowing buyers to purchase goods directly from manufacturers.

Although DhGate excludes additional intermediaries in the form of other shops, and the marketplace itself serves as a platform for placing only manufacturers’ goods, it is still not a direct D2C system, as DhGate charges a commission for sales transactions.

Only Chinese manufacturers can trade on the platform.

How to Scale Your Business On the World’s Online Market

Now you have an understanding of what representatives of the world giants of global marketplaces look like.

We will leave aside the issues of developing a primary business plan and your market platform. Since creating your own marketplace from scratch is an essential and therefore most important step, you can read our detailed article on this topic or contact us for advice.

LEARN ABOUT MARKETPLACE DEVELOPMENT

In this article, we will focus on how you can enter the global marketplace with your already existing resources and which options are a must-have for expansion into the global market.

What You Need to Run a Global Marketplace

As a marketplace owner, you have a number of benefits in case of going global: access to a broader audience, increased sales, and brand awareness. But what will be important for your marketplace if you decide to go international?

Multi-vendor tools: provide sellers on your marketplace with a storefront, as well as tools to manage orders, tax calculations, bulk processing, payments, shipping, and so on.
Localization: translate the text part of your platform into other languages.
Multicurrency: support for different currencies and payment methods.
Vendor plans: ability to divide sellers into user groups for monitoring and handling commissions.
Marketplace integration with your ecosystem: if you’re going international, ecosystem integration is essential to keep track of buyer IDs from different countries, as well as seller data, without the risk of losing the data you’ve already built.
Reliable hosting solution: requires a server capable of hosting a large database, as well as ongoing support for the server infrastructure.
Tools for in-depth analysis: track customer experience, orders and their needs to predict and adjust future development strategy.
Fulfillment system: the seller ships products to your marketplace’s warehouse, then the marketplace independently distributes goods to its logistics hubs and delivers orders.
Seller promotion opportunities: the more sales your sellers make, the more revenue you earn. Help your sellers grow their customer base and encourage them to stay on your marketplace.
Integrate your marketplace with a cross-selling service: help promote big brands on your platform and expand your sales channels.

You can run an MVP for initial testing of your business hypotheses and future strategy.

Another matter is working with distributors. To effectively enter the international market, you will need to establish new partnerships. There are certain bottlenecks in the form of complex bureaucracy, complicated pricing mechanisms, and lack of end-to-end analytics.

Based on our customers’ experiences, we have created a detailed guide on how to engage with customers and automate this process to successfully scale your business.

LEARN HOW TO SCALE RETAILING BUSINESS

Read more:

How to Scale Your Business to International Marketplace

In order for international sales on the global marketplace to be profitable, your marketplace must meet the expectations of the target audience. Their preferences, interests, mentality, and language must be taken into account.

A competent digital marketing strategy will allow the project to get in the field of vision of potential buyers of goods and services, increase the company’s recognizability and build a brand.

If you decide to develop international sales on the global marketplace, you will have to:

Give sellers the ability to customize their storefronts to emphasize an exclusive presence on your platform
Translate menus, descriptions and articles into customer languages e.g. via Google’s Cloud Translation
Connect relevant payment methods
Invest in promoting your products and services on the foreign market, and monitor the effectiveness of advertising campaigns
Study the legislation of the country where you plan to promote your goods or services
Register your company in the country or region where you plan to develop your business
Study the tastes and needs of your audience
Analyze your competitors
Choose a scheme of delivery of goods to customers

We make these arguments from our own experience, having worked extensively with global marketplaces looking to grow. Here are some case studies from our practice.

Fixing Performance Issues for Seamless Growth

Sure, we can talk a lot about specific features you should add to your global marketplace to scale successfully. But none of that will work if your site isn’t performing properly.

Shopmundo marketplace was facing user complaints about performance. Sales were down 18% and the client needed to regain customer loyalty. To resolve these issues, Simtech Development:

Performed a marketplace audit and code review to address existing bugs
Added a series of custom solutions that simplified the checkout process to reduce cart abandonment rates
Added a virtual wallet and customized a new payment system
Developed and launched a PWA application for the marketplace

In doing so, we eliminated the mistakes of the previous unscrupulous contractor and provided a complete site audit, technical development and ongoing technical support.

Expansion of eCommerce to New Regions

Simtech Development helped a major global coffee brand to launch its eCommerce resource in three new regions: Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

As the brand did not have a direct presence in these countries before, our company took into account the need to create visuals and content appropriate for the target audience in these locations. There was also a need to integrate the new platform with the client’s existing database. What was done to achieve this?

Understanding which visuals would be more appealing to users in these countries, we created a more minimalistic Scandinavian-style design
Launched an MVP based on a Multi-Vendor version of CS-Cart in Danish, Finnish and Swedish to visualize the results and form more accurate business hypotheses
Consolidated online and offline sales base by synchronizing CS-Cart and Salesforce CRM to get in-depth analysis of customer orders and adjust expansion strategy in new regions
Added video content upload and chat features for customer communication with sales managers
Provided technical support throughout all the stages of development

Our client successfully launched the online platform in new regions and increased its customer base by 4 times!

Helping a Water Filter Manufacturer Enter an International Market

Simtech Development was approached by a large countertop water filter company. The company wanted to digitize their business and enter the global market.

To get started, we launched a marketplace using an out-of-the-box CS-Cart solution. To ensure that the marketplace had no barriers for scaling, we also implemented the following features:

Integrated user data with the CREA ecosystem database
Added integration with WildFire, a cross-selling service, so that each organization is displayed as a card with detailed information: name, logo, and cashback percentage for purchases
Added the “Best Deals” section, allowing marketplace’s owner to customize the cashback percentage and add other special parameters
Created a template for sellers with a premium plan and added sorting filters for goods
Installed the Google Cloud Translation module to translate pages based on user location

*Languages selection on the main page of the store*

With the functionality prepared for international marketplaces, our client was able to deploy their own eCommerce resource in a short period of time.

Global Marketplace Trends

The volume of the eCommerce market continues to grow and is unlikely to slow down in the next few years. Trends in both global marketplaces and eCommerce in general indicate a greater focus on consumers’ needs. Offering convenience, faster delivery and value-added services.

Here are some current trends for 2025 in global marketplaces to consider:

Product oversaturation. Popular categories such as cosmetics and apparel have become extremely competitive. More companies and sellers will be thinking about how to stand out, find their niche, and offer not just the product, but the idea or value behind it.
Work with customer retention. In a highly competitive market, customer retention becomes a priority. Offer customers loyalty programs, discounts, personalized offers. Monitor reviews and respond to them promptly. Working with feedback builds trust and creates a positive image of the store.
AI integration. Some marketplaces already offer AI assistance in setting up promotional campaigns, pricing, and inventory management.
Speed up delivery. Shoppers are getting more impatient, so speed of delivery matters. Consider using marketplace programs to expedite product delivery.
Keep up with design trends. The main goal is to ensure that shoppers can find the products they need quickly, conveniently, and pleasantly. The trend is toward muted colors, minimal detail, and an increase in video content in the Shorts or TikTok formats with detailed demonstrations of product features.

Conclusion

Participating in international eCommerce trades opens up many opportunities for your online business: increasing sales and profits, improving your company’s competitiveness and presence in the global market. By joining the vast customer’s network of a global marketplace, you will have a variety of trading tools at your disposal and significantly reduce logistics and organization costs.

An alternative way to start selling internationally is through a multi-store online platform or marketplace. It allows you to create a separate store for each country and includes multi-language and multi-currency functionality. If you are interested in this option of scaling your business to foreign markets, contact us. We will make the necessary adjustments and, if necessary, modify your eCommerce platform with custom developments.

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Global Marketplaces — Best Online Marketplaces 2025