He inadvertently created eCommerce. That transaction, conducted on Aug. 11, 1994, via NetMarket, took place during a point in history when dial-up modems squealed, and websites looked like digital bulletin boards.
Three decades later, and online shopping is no mere curiosity but an increasingly compulsive habit. ECommerce is a multitrillion-dollar engine that drives global retail, logistics and payments innovation.
The field has evolved from clunky early catalog pages into artificial intelligence-driven, hyper-personalized ecosystems. The most striking shift is that eCommerce is no longer a separate category. It’s simply commerce.
As eCommerce hits its 31-year milestone, the next chapter is taking shape around data, user experience and payments. Each is in the middle of its own transformation, shaped in turn by shifting consumer expectations, emergent regulation and a wave of enabling technologies.
Read also: How the Platformization of Payments Is Powering Omnichannel Retail
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From Credit Cards to Clickless Checkouts
If the mid-1990s defined eCommerce by the novelty of buying online, the 2000s were about building trust through secure checkout pages, recognizable payment gateways and the near-universal adoption of SSL encryption.
Coming into the 2010s, speed took center stage, with one-click checkouts, mobile wallets and buy now, pay later (BNPL) tools lowering friction and boosting conversions.
Today, payments are entering a third phase, ambient commerce. Increasingly, the best payment experience is one the customer barely notices. Amazon pioneered this with its Just Walk Out technology, while Uber normalized the idea that you never explicitly hand over payment details once you’ve signed up. Now, startups and incumbents are chasing zero UI transactions where biometrics, stored credentials and background verification make checkout a passive step.
At the same time, retailers are embedding banking-like services into shopping experiences, from installment plans to savings rewards, blurring the line between commerce and FinTech.
Google, for example, unveiled a series of payments updates Tuesday (Aug. 12) aimed at online shoppers, including an expansion of Google’s pay-over-time options, which let shoppers in the United States choose from BNPL providers like Affirm and Zip through autofill on Chrome in a few clicks.
The PYMNTS Intelligence report “What Consumers Do When Their Go-To Credit Choice Is Unavailable” found that a third of shoppers purchasing essentials would skip the purchase if their preferred payment method were not available.
See also: Why Trust is Data’s Only Real Currency
What the Next 31 Years Might Look Like
For most of eCommerce’s history, the data model was to track as much as possible, stitch together a behavioral profile and target relentlessly. This surveillance-based approach, supercharged by third-party cookies and cross-site tracking, became the industry’s default.
That playbook is now collapsing. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, Google’s impending cookie phase-out, and a patchwork of privacy laws from the European Union to California have forced a reset. The conversation has shifted from “How much can we track?” to “How much trust can we earn?”
The future belongs to brands that don’t just take data but give data back in the form of better experiences.
The key challenge ahead is avoiding decision fatigue. As choice expands and attention spans shrink, the winning platforms will reduce cognitive load, anticipate needs, and surface fewer but more relevant options. Expect the most effective experiences to be those that feel curated, not endless.
PYMNTS explored these fundamental changes during a six-episode video series produced with Visa Acceptance Solutions. Each 10-minute conversation distills fresh data from “The 2025 Global Digital Shopping Index” into practical moves any merchant, acquirer or platform provider can act on without the jargon overload.
At 31 years old, eCommerce is no longer the scrappy outsider. It’s the backbone of global retail, the proving ground for FinTech innovation, and a barometer for consumer trust in digital ecosystems. Payments are disappearing into the background, data is becoming permission-based, and user experience is dissolving the boundaries between shopping, content and community.
If the first three decades of eCommerce were about digitizing the store, the next three may be about digitizing the shopper. The lines between online and offline are already blurring. In 2055, we may look back at the idea of a checkout page the way we now view fax machines.
