Global trade policy debates in 2026 remain heavily focused on tariffs, container shipments, and factory reshoring — the visible, physical mechanics of international commerce. Beneath that debate, a quieter and arguably more consequential shift has already occurred: services that can be delivered remotely over computer networks — everything from IT consulting and financial services to creative and professional work — now account for 56% of all global services exports, according to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data for 2024. For global business strategy, trade policy, and cross-border investment planning, this is no longer an emerging trend to monitor. It is the dominant structural fact of modern services trade.

Key Takeaways

• Digitally deliverable services accounted for 56% of all global services exports in 2024, per UNCTAD, up from a much smaller base a decade earlier — a share that has grown consistently over most of the last ten years.
• Global exports of digitally deliverable products rose 10% in 2025, continuing a similarly strong pace from the prior year, with developed economies exporting roughly $4.1 trillion and developing economies exporting an estimated $1.3 trillion.
• Developing economies’ exports of digitally deliverable services grew 12% in 2025, outpacing developed economies’ 9% growth — even as developing economies crossed the $1 trillion export threshold in this category for the first time in 2023.
• In Least Developed Countries (LDCs), digitally deliverable services represent just 16-20% of services exports — roughly a third of the global average — highlighting a widening digital trade divide even as the category grows globally.
• The WTO forecasts overall services trade growth slowing to 4.4% in 2026 (down from 6.8% in 2024), even as digitally delivered services growth remains comparatively resilient at 5.6%, reinforcing the category’s role as the more durable engine of services trade growth.

What “Digitally Deliverable” Actually Means

The 56% figure requires a precise definition to be useful for strategic planning. UNCTAD and the WTO define digitally deliverable services as those services that can be delivered remotely over information and communications technology (ICT) networks such as the internet — a category distinct from, though closely related to, the narrower measure of services actually delivered digitally in a given transaction. The digitally deliverable category encompasses ICT services themselves, along with sales and marketing services, financial services, professional and technical services, insurance services, intellectual-property-related services, and education and training services, among others.

This matters for trade strategy because it captures structural potential for remote delivery across an entire services category, not merely transactions that happened to occur digitally in a given year — making it a more forward-looking indicator of which service sectors are positioned to continue shifting toward borderless, low-marginal-cost delivery models.

The Ten-Year Trend: A Structural, Not Cyclical, Shift

The growth in digitally deliverable services’ share of total services trade has been remarkably consistent rather than a pandemic-era anomaly. While the COVID-19 pandemic did produce a temporary spike — with some measures of digitally delivered services trade briefly exceeding 60% of total services trade in 2020 — the subsequent partial normalization in 2021 and 2022 did not erase the underlying structural trend. By 2024, the 56% figure represented a continuation of growth that has been sustained over most of the past decade, with the strongest regional gains recorded in Asia (a 7.9 percentage point increase in the digitally deliverable share of total services exports over ten years) and North America (7.6 percentage points over the same period).

Global exports of digitally deliverable products continued this trajectory into 2025, rising approximately 10% year-on-year — matching the prior year’s growth rate and confirming this is a sustained trend rather than a one-time post-pandemic adjustment.

The Developed-Developing Divide: Converging, But Unevenly

The distribution of digitally deliverable services trade in 2025 illustrates both genuine progress and a persistent structural gap. Developed economies accounted for roughly three-quarters of digitally deliverable exports in 2025, worth approximately $4.1 trillion, while developing economies exported an estimated $1.3 trillion — a meaningful and growing share, but still a fraction of the developed-economy total. Developing economies’ growth rate in this category (12% in 2025) outpaced developed economies (9%), suggesting a genuine, if gradual, convergence trend.

However, this aggregate convergence masks a widening gap within the developing world. The distance between a relatively small number of highly successful developing-economy exporters and the much larger group of countries struggling to build export share in this category has widened, not narrowed, even as the overall developing-economy total has grown. Least Developed Countries illustrate this divide most starkly: digitally deliverable services represent only 16-20% of their total services exports — roughly a third of the 56% global average — and LDCs’ share of global digitally deliverable services exports has actually declined from 0.24% to 0.19% over the 2015-2023 period, despite a 43% increase in the absolute value of their exports in this category over the same window. UNCTAD’s own assessment is direct on this point: without targeted intervention, the digital economy risks entrenching existing global trade inequalities rather than alleviating them.

Sector Composition: Where the Value Concentrates

Within digitally deliverable services trade, value is heavily concentrated in a handful of sub-sectors. Computer services and financial services together represent the largest components of digitally delivered trade specifically, with other business services (encompassing diverse professional, management, and technical services) forming a substantial share of the “Other commercial services” category that dominates global services trade composition more broadly — that broader category accounted for roughly 60% of total global services trade in 2024, with Europe alone contributing about 40% of those exports.

Regional trade-flow patterns within this category also reveal distinct structural differences: European digitally deliverable service exports are heavily intra-regional, with 62% of exports remaining within the region, while North America is overwhelmingly externally oriented, exporting 82% of its digitally deliverable services outside the region — a divergence with direct implications for how trade policy shifts in one bloc ripple into the other.

Why This Matters for 2026 Trade Policy and Business Strategy

The WTO’s 2026 outlook for overall commercial services trade shows deceleration — growth is projected to slow to roughly 4.4%, down sharply from 6.8% in 2024, driven primarily by weaker transport services growth (a direct casualty of the broader merchandise trade slowdown linked to elevated 2026 tariff activity) and softer travel growth. Digitally delivered services, by contrast, are forecast to grow at a comparatively resilient 5.6% in 2026 — meaningfully outpacing the broader services trade average and reinforcing the category’s role as the more durable growth engine within global services trade during a period of broader trade policy uncertainty.

This resilience has a structural explanation directly relevant to 2026’s tariff environment: digitally deliverable services are not directly subject to tariffs in the way merchandise trade is, though they remain vulnerable to indirect spillover effects through their links to goods trade and broader economic output. For businesses and policymakers navigating an increasingly tariff-affected trade environment, this relative insulation is a meaningful strategic consideration — a services-export strategy weighted toward digitally deliverable categories carries structurally different tariff exposure than a goods-export strategy.

Strategic Implications by Stakeholder

• For exporters in developing and emerging markets: The 12% growth rate in digitally deliverable services exports from developing economies in 2025 suggests genuine, executable opportunity — but the widening gap between top-performing and struggling exporters within the developing world means market access, digital infrastructure investment, and skills development remain binding constraints rather than solved problems.
• For multinational trade and tax strategy teams: The sharp divergence in regional trade orientation (Europe’s 62% intra-regional share versus North America’s 82% extra-regional share) should directly inform where digitally deliverable service lines are structured and where cross-border service agreements are domiciled.
• For trade policymakers, including in Pakistan and similar emerging markets: The LDC data point — a declining global export share despite rising absolute export value — is a cautionary signal that digital services export growth alone does not guarantee improved relative competitive position without deliberate, targeted digital trade infrastructure investment.
• For portfolio and country-risk analysts: Given digitally deliverable services’ comparative tariff insulation and stronger 2026 growth forecast relative to transport and travel services, economies with services-export mixes weighted toward this category may exhibit somewhat greater resilience to an escalating tariff environment than goods-export-dependent economies.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of global trade is digitally deliverable services?

Digitally deliverable services accounted for 56% of all global services exports in 2024, according to UNCTAD — a share that has grown consistently over the past decade and continued rising into 2025 with roughly 10% annual export growth.

Are digitally deliverable services affected by tariffs?

Not directly — digitally deliverable services are not subject to tariffs in the same way goods are, though they remain vulnerable to indirect spillover effects from broader merchandise trade slowdowns and economic uncertainty linked to tariff activity.

Is the digital services trade gap between rich and poor countries closing?

Only partially. Developing economies grew digitally deliverable services exports faster than developed economies in 2025 (12% versus 9%), but Least Developed Countries’ share of global digitally deliverable exports actually declined from 2015 to 2023, despite rising absolute export values.

Conclusion

The 56% figure represents one of the more consequential, if underdiscussed, structural facts in global trade today: more than half of all services traded internationally can now be delivered without a ship, a truck, or a border crossing in the traditional sense. For businesses and policymakers focused on 2026’s tariff-dominated trade headlines, the digitally deliverable services trend offers both a note of resilience — a growth engine comparatively insulated from tariff policy — and a note of caution, as the data makes clear that this resilience and growth are not being distributed evenly across the global economy.

Uber’s pursuit of Delivery Hero has finally crossed the finish line, and the structure of the winning bid says as much about the state of global food-delivery competition as the headline price itself.

The Deal Terms

Uber will acquire Frankfurt-listed Delivery Hero in a deal valued at €41.50, or $47.59, per share, with Dutch technology investor Prosus offloading its near-17 percent stake in Delivery Hero to Uber as part of the transaction. The improved offer follows a rejected earlier approach: one of Delivery Hero’s major shareholders had turned down a €38-per-share offer from Uber back in May, forcing Uber to sweeten terms by roughly 9 percent to get the deal across the line.

The transaction’s second component is arguably more strategically important than the headline acquisition. Delivery Hero will simultaneously sell its businesses across 14 markets to SSW Partners in a deal worth $1.4 billion, specifically covering territories where Delivery Hero’s operations would otherwise overlap directly with Uber’s existing footprint post-acquisition — a structure clearly designed to pre-empt antitrust objections in those markets.

Why the Divestiture Structure Matters

Regulators across Europe and Asia have grown increasingly wary of food-delivery consolidation given the sector’s history of just two or three dominant platforms per market. By carving out the 14 overlapping markets into a separate sale to SSW Partners before regulatory review even begins, Uber and Delivery Hero appear to be attempting to neutralise the most obvious competition concerns pre-emptively — a playbook increasingly common in large tech-platform M&A globally.

Market Reaction

The market’s initial reaction was muted rather than euphoric: Delivery Hero shares fell about 1 percent on the news, suggesting investors had already priced in a deal at or near these terms following months of on-and-off negotiations, or harboured lingering doubts about regulatory approval timelines given the multi-market divestiture complexity involved.

The Broader M&A Backdrop

The Uber-Delivery Hero transaction lands amid a broader resurgence in large-scale industrial and technology M&A. On the same trading day, Swiss engineering group ABB agreed to acquire UK-listed industrial flow-control specialist Rotork for £4.1 billion, or $5.6 billion — ABB’s biggest-ever acquisition, sending Rotork shares soaring 66.7 percent in morning trading (a deal covered in greater depth in our companion piece on the UK industrial M&A wave). The concurrent timing of two multi-billion-dollar cross-border deals suggests dealmakers are treating current valuations and financing conditions as a window worth acting on before the Fed’s tightening bias, discussed elsewhere in this series, potentially raises the cost of acquisition financing further.

What It Means for Consumers and Competitors

For consumers across Uber’s and Delivery Hero’s combined markets, the immediate practical question is pricing power: fewer major platforms per market historically correlates with reduced promotional intensity and, eventually, higher delivery fees, even as the SSW Partners carve-out is designed to preserve at least nominal competition in the 14 most overlap-sensitive territories. Competing platforms — from DoorDash in the US to regional players across Southeast Asia — will be watching regulatory reception to this deal closely as a signal for how much further consolidation authorities are willing to tolerate in a sector still recovering from pandemic-era overexpansion.

Featured Snippet

How much is Uber paying for Delivery Hero? Uber’s takeover of Delivery Hero values the company at €41.50 ($47.59) per share, an increase from a previously rejected €38 offer. As part of the deal, Delivery Hero will sell its operations in 14 overlapping markets to SSW Partners for $1.4 billion.

On June 22, 2026, the European Central Bank quietly launched the most significant test of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for cross‑border payments. The digital euro cross‑border pilot connects the Eurosystem’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform with the real‑time gross settlement systems of Singapore, the Philippines, and South Africa, allowing instant, final‑value transfers in central bank money across continents (ECB Press Release, June 2026). The test, which will run for six months with a select group of commercial banks and payment service providers, is designed to prove that a CBDC can slash the cost, time, and opacity of international transactions. If successful, it could mark the beginning of the end for the 50‑year‑old correspondent banking model.

How the Pilot Works

Unlike some earlier CBDC prototypes that created a parallel blockchain network, the digital euro pilot uses a hybrid model. The central bank issues digital euros on its own ledger, but end‑users—consumers and businesses—access them through regulated intermediaries like Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and FinTech wallets such as N26. When a German importer pays a Singaporean supplier, the funds move from the importer’s digital euro wallet, through the ECB’s TIPS, and instantly settle on the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s ledger, where they are converted into digital Singapore dollars at the prevailing FX rate. The entire process takes under 10 seconds, compared with the two‑to‑three days typical of SWIFT‑based correspondent banking.

Crucially, the pilot employs programmable money features. Smart contracts can attach conditions to payments: for example, a trade finance transaction could automatically release funds when a shipment’s IoT sensor confirms arrival, or a royalty payment could split funds between multiple rights holders the instant a song is streamed. The ECB has partnered with the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub to develop these conditional payment triggers, using the DLT‑based “Project Nexus” blueprint that successfully connected India’s UPI and Singapore’s PayNow in 2024 (BIS Innovation Hub, Project Nexus Update, June 2026).

The European CBDC Timeline Accelerates

The pilot is the latest milestone in a timeline that has accelerated since 2023. After a two‑year investigation phase, the ECB’s Governing Council formally approved the development of a digital euro in October 2025, with a target launch for Eurozone residents in 2028. The cross‑border pilot was originally planned for 2027 but was moved forward after the success of the Eurosystem’s domestic wholesale DLT trials and mounting pressure from member states to provide a credible alternative to dollar‑dominated payment rails. ECB President Christine Lagarde, speaking at the ECB Forum in Sintra, said, “Our aim is not to kill private innovation but to provide a safe, public‑infrastructure backbone on which the private sector can build competitive services” (ECB Sintra Speech, June 2026).

Implications for Commercial Banks

For commercial banks, the digital euro cross‑border pilot is both an opportunity and an existential threat. On the opportunity side, banks can offer new products—real‑time, low‑cost international payment services to their retail and SME clients, reclaiming a market that FinTechs like Wise and Revolut have been eating into. They can build smart‑contract‑based trade finance solutions that reduce fraud and working capital needs. However, the pilot also exposes the vulnerability of traditional revenue streams. Correspondent banking generated an estimated $120 billion in global fee income in 2025, much of it from FX spreads, wire transfer charges, and float income. Instant, final‑value settlement at the central bank level compresses these margins dramatically. A study by Oliver Wyman estimates that a fully deployed CBDC‑based cross‑border system could reduce bank payment revenues by 30–40% (Oliver Wyman, “CBDC and the Future of Payments”).

The pilot also raises questions about the role of bank deposits. If corporate treasurers can hold digital euros directly at the central bank, they may withdraw sizeable balances from commercial banks during times of stress, increasing liquidity risk. To mitigate this, the ECB has imposed a tiered holding limit: individuals can hold up to €3,000 in digital euros, and businesses up to €500,000, with any excess automatically swept into a commercial bank account. This “waterfall” mechanism preserves banks’ deposit bases while offering the public the safety of central bank money for a basic tranche.

SWIFT’s Response and the Geopolitical Angle

SWIFT, the messaging network that has dominated cross‑border payments for decades, is not standing still. It has launched a competing initiative, SWIFT CBDC Interlink, which aims to connect existing domestic CBDCs through a standardized API layer without requiring each central bank to build bespoke bilateral links. In March 2026, SWIFT demonstrated that 28 central banks could trade tokenized assets across its platform in a simulated environment (SWIFT Press Release, March 2026. The digital euro pilot, however, is a direct challenge because it shows that central banks can bypass SWIFT entirely, settling through their own interconnected ledgers.

The geopolitical dimension is impossible to ignore. The pilot’s partners—Singapore, the Philippines, South Africa—are all countries with strong trade ties to Europe and a desire to diversify away from the dollar‑centric financial system. China’s digital yuan (e‑CNY) has been live for domestic use for several years, and the People’s Bank of China has been aggressively signing bilateral currency swap agreements to promote its use in Belt and Road trade. The digital euro, by providing a credible, rule‑of‑law‑based alternative, strengthens the Eurozone’s position in the emerging multipolar currency order.

What’s Next?

The six‑month pilot will be evaluated on transaction volume, latency, FX pricing efficiency, and compliance with anti‑money laundering rules. The ECB has confirmed that all transactions will be subject to existing KYC and sanctions screening, with wallet providers acting as the frontline compliance gatekeepers. If the pilot meets its success criteria, the ECB aims to expand it to the UK, Japan, and several African nations by mid‑2027, creating the largest cross‑border CBDC network outside China.

For the financial industry, the message is clear: the era of a few global correspondent banks intermediating the world’s payments is ending. The future is a multi‑polar network of interconnected public platforms, with programmable features that redefine “money” as a dynamic, conditional instrument. Banks that invest now in building compatible wallets, smart‑contract‑based trade products, and compliance tools will thrive; those that wait will find themselves disintermediated by central banks and agile FinTechs.