RetailTechNews rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European retail technology space. In this week’s edition: Springbot Launches Data Exchange for e-commerce SMBs; Braintree Adds Fraud Prevention & Loyalty Schemes to Payment Service; and Retailers Should Target According to Gender.

Springbot Launches Data Exchange for e-commerce SMBs

Springbot is a data-driven marketing platform for e-commerce merchants. The company is now launching an exchange that is intended as a data co-operative for e-commerce SMBs, providing retailers access to data and resources that are typically only available to larger market players.

At the core of the new exchange is a feature to enable marketers to expand their reach. The Audience Expander algorithmically matches a retailer’s anonymised customer data to identify lookalike prospects in the Springbot exchange. The exchange enables access to data from participating Springbot retailers. Additionally, data from Springbot’s partners is also part of the data pool.

“Larger retailers have been sharing anonymised data and insights for decades, but this valuable information has not been easily accessible to small and mid-sized retailers because of cost and complexity”, explains Brooks Robinson, co-founder and CEO, Springbot. “Springbot Exchange helps SMB retailers unlock that valuable data and levels the playing field for all e-commerce businesses.”

Braintree Adds Fraud Prevention & Loyalty Schemes to Payment Service

Paypal’s e-commerce-focused payment daughter Braintree is launching a new solution. Dubbed 'Extend', the payment service also comes with fraud detection and loyalty scheme functionalities, and aims to provider a solution that is easier to integrate with internet solutions such as payments service providers, rewards platforms, content platforms, or social platforms that are commonly used by e-commerce companies.

Braintree’s Extend is intended as an alternative to challenging integration, the company explains in a blog post. Focusing on three payment challenges, Extend is aimed at three types of partnerships: transaction services, loyalty, and contextual commerce. Extend’s transaction capabilities are positioned to make transaction processing easier, including synchronising disparate payment systems, working with specialised anti-fraud service providers, or dual-vaulting a user’s payment information for increased availability and redundancy.

Similarly, Extend connects retailers with loyalty platforms, online-to-offline commerce platforms, or card networks to provide cash-back or card-linked offers for securely shared user data that tracks purchases and rewards. The challenges of contextual commerce have been taken into account with functionality that allows merchants to leverage Extend to connect to discovery platforms. Thus, users can discover and purchase items end-to-end, without leaving the merchant’s platform.

The new solution is available with immediate effect.

Retailers Should Target According to Gender

A study conducted by data and analytics provider GlobalData finds that retailers must target male and female shoppers in different ways. According to their all-year gifting survey, only 40.9% male shoppers enjoy gift shopping, compared to 61.5% female shoppers.

Approaches to gift shopping vary between men and women, the study finds. While female shoppers are interested in prices and promotional offers, male shoppers tend to lose out on promotion opportunities and price comparison due to a last-minute approach to shopping.

Zoe Mills, retail analyst at GlobalData, says: “With male shoppers, who are much more likely to panic buy, retailers have the opportunity to stand out from competitors by providing fast delivery options. Express delivery should be highlighted online to encourage male shoppers to invest time in browsing for gifts, as they know they can get the item delivered in time.”