This week the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) announced that eBay has been recognized as supporting small business trade participation. This comes as part of the WTO-ICC Small Business Champions initiative, which exists to promote small business participation in global trade. It does so by recognizing innovative and practical ideas by businesses and business organizations that seek to encourage internationalization of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

eBay’s contribution – the “eBay Emerging Markets Initiative” – aims to raise awareness amongst small business communities in emerging countries of the opportunities that the online commerce platform presents for market expansion. It is modelled on the eBay and ITC partnership and the on-going joint project with SheTrades where eBay and ITC have together identified women entrepreneurs in Africa who are committed to exploring platform-based exporting, and are providing them with tailored training and promotional eBay services and support for successful international selling. The ambition is to expand this model to MSMEs in Latin America, the Middle East and African countries through similar partnerships and the same type of application process, training, and services.

eBay is proud and honored that its efforts to help MSMEs in developing markets use the eBay marketplace for international sales have received official recognition by the WTO and ICC as supportive of small business trade participation.