Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Salesforce acquires Braze for $5.66B, Allegro opens to Ukrainian shoppers, and Wildfire Systems puts merchant cashback inside Apple, Google and Samsung Wallet.
Salesforce just dropped $5.66 billion on Braze — the retention tool thousands of DTC brands depend on. Plus Allegro unlocks Ukraine and loyalty rewards move inside your mobile wallet.
In this episode:
The Digital Commerce Daily is a concise briefing for ecommerce, retail media and digital commerce professionals, hosted by Marco & Klara. New episode every day.
Enjoying the show? A quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify helps other marketers find us.
Also from Marco & Klara: The FMCG Marketing Daily · The Health Marketing Daily
Your 8-minute briefing on the platforms, players, and profits driving digital commerce today. Hosted by Marco and Klara.
Marco: Three stories today that are worth your full attention.
Klara: We've got a major acquisition that reshapes how ecommerce brands talk to their customers, a big marketplace move into Ukraine, and a new way loyalty rewards are showing up directly inside mobile wallets.
Marco: If any of those touch your business — and at least one probably does — stay with us.
Klara: Let's go.
Marco: Salesforce is buying Braze for five point six six billion dollars — and if you run an ecommerce brand, this one is worth paying attention to.
Klara: Let's give people a bit of context first. Braze is a customer engagement platform — basically, it's the tool that lets brands send the right message to the right customer at the right moment. Push notifications when you abandon a basket. A personalised offer after your third purchase. That kind of thing. Thousands of direct-to-consumer brands have built their entire retention strategy around it.
Marco: And Salesforce, for anyone who doesn't know, is one of the biggest software companies in the world. They already own a huge chunk of the tools businesses use to manage customer relationships and sales. This deal makes their platform significantly more powerful — on paper, at least.
Klara: The numbers are striking. Five point six six billion makes this one of the biggest marketing technology deals of 2026. Salesforce says they plan to use Braze's AI to deliver real-time signals about customer behaviour — meaning brands can react faster, across more channels, all from one place.
Marco: For large enterprise brands, this could be genuinely useful. One connected stack, one data layer, fewer integration headaches. That's a real operational win.
Klara: But I keep thinking about the smaller DTC brands. The ones that chose Braze precisely because it was independent and flexible. When a platform gets absorbed into a giant like Salesforce, pricing tends to go up and the product often shifts to serve bigger customers first.
Marco: That's the real risk. Braze built its reputation serving fast-moving ecommerce brands. If this acquisition pulls it upmarket, those brands will need to find alternatives — and rebuilding a retention stack from scratch is not a small job.
Klara: Worth watching closely, especially if Braze is part of your current setup.
Marco: Onto our next story now.
Marco: Allegro — the biggest online marketplace in Central Europe — is now opening its doors to shoppers in Ukraine.
Klara: For anyone not familiar with Allegro, think of it as Poland's version of Amazon. It dominates online shopping across Central Europe, with millions of active sellers and an enormous product catalogue. Until now, it's been largely focused on its home market.
Marco: What's changed is this: Ukrainian consumers can now browse and buy directly from Allegro's existing Polish seller base. Allegro isn't building a separate Ukrainian site — no local warehouses, no local customer service operation. Ukrainian shoppers simply get access to what's already there. That's a cross-border play — letting buyers in one country shop from sellers based in another. Ukraine has a population of around 35 to 38 million people, and its ecommerce infrastructure has been growing steadily, so the potential audience here is not small.
Klara: What I find clever about this is the risk profile. Allegro gets access to a new consumer market without having to build anything from scratch. No local team, no local logistics network. The sellers do the work; Allegro takes the margin.
Marco: And for sellers already on the platform, this is basically free growth. You wake up one morning and you have a new market available to you without lifting a finger.
Klara: Though I'd temper that slightly. Selling cross-border comes with its own friction — returns, customs, language. Ukrainian shoppers expecting the same experience as Polish shoppers might run into bumps. That could affect satisfaction and long-term retention.
Marco: True — but as a first step into a largely untapped market, this is a sensible move. Eastern Europe is becoming a genuine growth frontier as Western European markets get more crowded and competitive.
Klara: One to watch for any seller already active on Allegro.
Marco: Our third story is coming right up.
Marco: Our third story is about loyalty programmes — and a quiet but meaningful change in where they live on your phone.
Klara: So right now, if a brand wants to reward you for shopping with them, you usually have to do some work. Download an app, sign up for a portal, remember to check in before you buy. Most people don't bother. That's the loyalty programme problem in a nutshell — the friction kills the participation.
Marco: What's changed here is this: a company called Wildfire Systems, which runs cashback and loyalty programmes for brands, has partnered with a firm called Badge, which builds infrastructure for mobile wallets. Together, they're pushing merchant offers and cashback rewards directly into Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, and Samsung Wallet.
Klara: So instead of logging into a separate app to claim a reward, the offer is already sitting inside the wallet you open when you tap to pay at checkout. The reward finds you, rather than the other way around.
Marco: For brands, this is significant. Loyalty has always had an adoption problem. People sign up and then forget the programme exists. Putting your offer at the exact moment someone opens their phone to pay — that's about as close to the point of purchase as you can get without being on the checkout screen itself.
Klara: I'd add some nuance there. The technology is promising, but the value only lands if the offers are actually good. Moving rewards into the wallet doesn't fix weak incentives — it just makes them more visible. Brands still need to think hard about what they're actually offering people.
Marco: That's true. But the distribution problem has always been the bigger barrier. And what I find telling about this story is the broader direction of travel — commerce is slowly migrating closer and closer to the operating system itself. Wallets, lock screens, voice assistants. The checkout is moving to wherever you already are. Brands that plan for that shift now will have a real head start.
Marco: The single biggest idea from today — the places where customers discover deals, earn rewards, and get marketed to are all moving closer to the moment of payment.
Klara: So ask yourself: when someone opens their phone to buy something, is your brand visible at that moment — or are you one screen too late?