New geopolitics of digital trade: Towards a marketplace planet

Far from having reached its peak, e-commerce is establishing itself as one of the most enduring and powerful drivers of the 21st-century global economy. In its report «The Next Big Arenas of Competition ,» the McKinsey Global Institute identifies this sphere as a «continuous arena»: an already established sector that is entering a phase of profound and exponential transformation, likely to reshape the global economy by 2040.

With revenues projected to reach between US$1400 billion and US $2000 billion by that time, e-commerce represents not only a continuation of digital growth, but also a shift in scale, geography, and model.

E-commerce is no longer a simple extension of online sales from the 2010s; it is now a hyperstrategic domain where smart logistics, artificial intelligence, sovereign digital infrastructure, behavioral data , embedded finance and social platforms converge.

The report emphasizes the competitive density of this sector: the « shuffle rate» (an index measuring market share movements between players) has reached a world record, revealing a fierce struggle between established giants and newcomers.

■ «Frontiers of demand»

One of the report’s most salient points is the sector’s structural shift toward markets that have historically been digitally underdeveloped. In Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, the growth in mobile access, digital payments, and logistics infrastructure is opening up entire territories to a new form of consumption. These areas, referred to as « frontiers of demand « , could account for the majority of e-commerce expansion within the next twenty years. The McKinsey Global Institute emphasizes the latent potential of sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth is accompanied by a rise in the urban middle classes and low-threshold digital banking thanks to local fintechs.

■ Hybrid marketplaces

But it is not just geographic regions that are redrawing the contours of e-commerce. It’s also the internal mutations of its mechanisms. The e-commerce of tomorrow is multi-format : traditional marketplaces, interactive live shopping, sales through influence, ultra-specialized vertical platforms, and even social commerce integrated into super apps. McKinsey cites as an example the evolution of Chinese e-commerce towards a model where apps like WeChat, Xiaohongshu , and Douyin are becoming hybrid marketplaces, merging social networking, content, payment, and delivery. This fusion of uses accentuates the dependence on behavioral data and reinforces the power of platforms capable of orchestrating the entire customer experience.

■ AI redefines urban delivery

This transformation is also logistical. On-demand delivery hubs, autonomous warehouses, urban dark stores, fleets of drones and self-driving vehicles are now part of an AI-driven distribution logic. The report shows how, in certain advanced markets, the marginal cost of express delivery is becoming lower than that of a physical purchase. This is a strategic shift: as physical commerce becomes a cost, digital tchnologies become a lever for optimization, no longer just for distribution, but for design, demand forecasting, and even product design.

■ Governments regulate infrastructure

The issue is no longer just commercial, it is geopolitical. McKinsey points out that Governments are beginning to regulate not only the content of commercial exchanges, but the «infrastructure» of e-commerce itself: data management, control of payment interfaces, taxation of cross-border flows, and digital sovereignty. Ultimately, e-commerce could become a field of strategic confrontation between digital powers. Already, Europe, through the Digital Services Act , and India, through data protectionist policies, are trying to regain control of digital intermediation chains. Platforms will have to learn to deal with fragmented jurisdictions, competing technical standards, and non-unified governance rules.

Where is the competitive edge?

Finally, the report warns of the difficulty of maintaining a competitive edge in such an unstable ecosystem. E-commerce is not only an arena of innovation, but also an arena of attrition. Margins are eroding, loyalty costs are rising, and price wars are becoming algorithmic. In this context, only players capable of capitalizing on the verticalization of services—by integrating fintech, AI, logistics, loyalty, and customer experience—will be able to claim lasting dominance. The era of merchants is over. The era of ecosystems is beginning.

Radia LAHLOU