How to Start an E-commerce Company : A Global Registration Guide

Registering an e-commerce company is no longer the main hurdle it once was. The real work now is deciding where to incorporate, how you’ll accept international payments, and whether your business is built for a market where cross-border sales are growing faster than domestic e-commerce itself.

The global e-commerce market reached $33.91 trillion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $39.70 trillion in 2026, according to Grand View Research. What’s changed since the earlier version of this guide isn’t the basic registration steps, business incorporation, domain registration, and payment setup are still the core requirements almost everywhere, it’s the scale of the opportunity beyond your home country. Below is an updated look at what starting an e-commerce company involves in 2026, with the country-by-country basics refreshed and the payment landscape brought up to date.

Why cross-border matters more than it used to

A growing share of online shoppers now buy from outside their own country by default, not as an exception. Research compiled by Thunderbit found 59% of online shoppers report buying from retailers outside their home country, with 35% doing so at least monthly, and cross-border e-commerce continues to account for roughly 18.8% to 20% of all global online sales according to Capital One Shopping’s research. If you’re setting up a new e-commerce company in 2026, designing for international customers from day one is no longer optional groundwork, it’s close to a default expectation.

Business registration: still mandatory, still country-specific

Wherever you choose to incorporate, business registration remains a mandatory first step, and it still requires the same groundwork: a business plan, market analysis, and an understanding of the local business legislation, e-commerce and internet-related laws, and consumer protection rules that apply. One meaningful difference from 2018 is that the GDPR, once described as the “latest” regulation for companies selling into the EU, is now a fully mature, well-enforced framework, and businesses registering today should treat GDPR compliance as a baseline requirement rather than a new consideration.

Starting an e-commerce company in Singapore

Singapore remains one of the most developed e-commerce hubs in Southeast Asia. Registering a company here still means incorporating with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), which requires a local registered address, a local director, and a company secretary, with incorporation typically completing within about a week for a private limited company. If you’re setting up your hosting and domain alongside registration, our guide to hosting service providers covers what to look for before you commit to a plan.

Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand

Hong Kong’s process remains similar to Singapore’s, a limited liability company with a local director, secretary, and address, registered through the Hong Kong Companies Registry, with domain names administered separately. Japan still tends to involve a longer registration timeline through the Legal Affairs Bureau (Homukyoku) and generally favors the .co.jp domain for locally operating businesses. Thailand continues to require at least one local partner for foreign-owned businesses and a minimum age of 21 for registrants, with domain names managed through the Thai Network Information Center Foundation.

Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, and the Netherlands

In Europe, Ireland remains a strong destination for e-commerce incorporation, supported by its established tech ecosystem, with company filings submitted online through the Companies Registration Office. Cyprus still offers comparatively low corporate tax rates and an English-language legal system, making it accessible for many foreign founders. Germany’s registration process remains straightforward with no unusual capital requirements, while the Netherlands continues to offer a fully online incorporation process and hosts a strong technical talent pool.

Payments: the biggest shift since 2018

The old advice to open a dedicated merchant bank account before you could accept payments online is now only one option among several, and often not the fastest one. Modern payment platforms such as Stripe and Adyen let many new e-commerce businesses accept international payments without setting up a traditional merchant account first, which has meaningfully lowered the barrier to launching in multiple countries at once. That shift matters more given how payment preferences have moved: digital wallets are projected to represent 51.4% of cross-border payments in 2026, according to Precedence Research data cited by Charle Agency, so payment flexibility now needs to be part of your setup from the outset, not an afterthought.

Logistics have gotten faster, not simpler

Cross-border delivery has genuinely improved in the past few years. Compiled 2026 research from Amra & Elma found that AI-powered customs pre-clearance systems, deployed across 47 countries by late 2025, have already reduced average cross-border delivery times by 22%. That’s a real advantage for a new e-commerce company launching internationally today, but it doesn’t remove the need to plan customs, duties, and delivery expectations by country before you launch, since infrastructure varies significantly even where it’s improved. If dropshipping is part of your sourcing model, our dropshipping guide covers the sourcing side of this in more depth.

Wrapping up

Starting an e-commerce company is still a matter of choosing a jurisdiction, registering the business, setting up a domain, and getting your payment infrastructure right. What’s changed is the scale of what’s available to you the moment you launch: a market approaching $40 trillion globally, a majority of shoppers already comfortable buying across borders, and payment and logistics infrastructure that’s considerably more capable than it was when this guide was first written.

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