Cooperation on E-business

Israel's Internet economy is developing at a fast speed, with its total volume accounting for about 6.5% of GDP, in which Internet-related investment accounts for about 1.7% of GDP, and Internet-related export of products and services account for about 2.5% of GDP, compared with only 0.5% of GDP contributed by Israel’s domestic e-commerce.

Though domestic e-commerce in Israel is comparatively lagging behind, the country owns advanced e-commerce related technologies. Acclaimed as a rising start-up haven second only to Silicon Valley, Israel is home to more than 500 startups, which helps bring in a lot of venture capital and M&A opportunities.

In addition, Israel has welcomed the R&D centers of many internationally renowned companies. Many multinational companies have established R&D and sales centers in Israel through mergers and acquisitions. Armed with these resources, Israel is leading the way in Internet technologies, especially in the fields of cloud computing, data storage, and big data analytics.

Israel has also become an innovation center for international e-commerce companies. As early as 2005, eBay acquired Shopping.com, an Israel-based global online shopping comparison website and turned it into a R&D center to promote global innovation in e-commerce and payment. In 2010, eBay acquired another Israeli company, The Gifts Project, whose offices later became eBay's Israel Innovation Center. It is from there, eBay launched its new online retail model – a social e-commerce platform. 

Sears, the fourth-largest retailer in the US, entered Israel as early as 2009. Since then, the company has set up R&D centers in Israel to research on e-commerce-related technologies, services, products and concepts. The provided services include shopyourway.com, an innovative community e-commerce platform, Swidgets, a system that integrates social media function with e-commerce, and some other mobile commerce platforms.