From left to right, Bruno Esgalhado,Partner at McKinsey, Yair Martínez, Chief Operation Officer at GoTrendier, Adrián Escudé, Chief Revenue Officer at SeQura and Pol Karaso, CEO and co founder of Ealyx.

This Wednesday, as part of the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, a panel of experts brought together leaders from the fintech and e-commerce industries where they analyzed the role of technology in the transition toward sustainable commerce in consumer electronics.

The event gathered executives from pioneering companies in the sector, such as SeQura, Gotrendier, McKinsey, and Ealyx. They addressed the challenges and opportunities of the circular economy in this rapidly growing market, even more with the outbreak of artificial intelligence: globally, the consumer electronics industry is expected to increase in value from $110 billion in 2025 to $476 billion in 2035. Meanwhile, in Europe, the market is projected to grow from $28.9 billion in 2025 to $125 billion in 2035. To go into more detail, the consumer electronics industry produces over 2.5 billion devices annually, including 1.3 billion smartphones and 240 million wearables, posing a major environmental challenge due to short life cycles.

The panel highlighted that currently, only 8% of electronic devices are reused. Although this percentage is expected to rise to 14% by 2035, there is still a long way to go to achieve optimal sustainability levels.

In Spain specifically, forecasts predict that the reuse rate will increase from 9% in 2025 to 16% in 2035, representing approximately 8 million tons of reused devices.

Experts agreed on the enormous potential of "recommerce" (resale commerce), which is expected to reach $1.24 trillion globally by 2035. They also analyzed the growth of trade-in programs (which include only the purchase of used products from consumers), which could reach up to $244 billion by 2035, multiplying its current value sixfold.

Participants highlighted the necessity of technological innovations to facilitate this growth. For example, the Spanish company Ealyx offers a payment method that allows customers to pay for new purchases using the value of used products. This system provides an instant discount on the total cart value based on the worth of an old mobile phone, tablet, or backpack, for example.

Ealyx has already been implemented in pioneering e-commerce platforms such as Allzone.es and Microfusa.com and partnering with buyback partners such as Sounds Market among others. Pol Karaso, Co-founder and CEO at Ealyx pointed out: “we believe that the whole ecosystem requires a solution or service that implements circularity. And that's actually what we're trying to do as an enabler, that provides a commercial incentive for the merchant to be able to be circular, but also grow at the same time. I think the key is to put the right incentives to the merchants at the right place so that they see circularity and sustainability, especially from a consumer's perspective, attractive enough”.

Besides consumer electronics, the circular economy is transforming a lot of industries, such as fashion. In this sense, Yair Martínez, Chief Operation Officer at GoTrendier, commented, “consumers are mainly driven to resell clothes for extra income and to declutter their homes, while sustainability plays a role in user retention rather than acquisition. Major retailers are developing their own resale platforms, but their single-brand approach may push them toward collaborations with multi-brand resale platforms in the future”.

As e-commerce becomes increasingly powered by artificial intelligence, the circular economy is gaining momentum as a sustainable solution to reduce waste and extend the lifecycle of consumer goods. AI-driven platforms are optimizing recommerce, trade-in programs, and predictive analytics to streamline resale processes and enhance trust in second-hand markets. In the fintech space, AI is also revolutionizing risk assessment, enabling smarter financial solutions for circular commerce. "We started operating 10 years ago with no risk scoring, accepting every transaction as a way to accelerate our learnings, in true startup style. We quickly evolved from decision trees to semi-supervised machine learning models, and recently introduced AI-powered anomaly detection algorithms to detect fraud more precisely, which allowed us to increase acceptance rates by 5 percentage points while decreasing default by 8" said Adrián Escudé, Chief Revenue Officer at SeQura, highlighting the role of AI in facilitating secure and scalable financial transactions within the ecommerce ecosystem.

Finally, Bruno Esgalhado,Partner at McKinsey and moderator of the panel, shared some of the learnings of the conversation, highlighting four of them: “Achieving short-term growth and profitability does not have to come at the expense of long-term success, as long as there is a well-structured and strategic model in place, even if its full potential is realized over time through a snowball effect. Additionally, AI is becoming an integral part of business operations, acting as a key enabler for innovation and scalability, though still in its early stages of development. Lastly, sustainability should be viewed not just as a goal, but as a fundamental mindset that shapes business strategies and long-term decision-making”.

As a part of the broader conversation on the circular economy, Óscar Díaz, Managing Director Southern Europe at Foxway, shared his perspective: “At Foxway, we believe that electronics deserve a second life. We collect, refurbish and resell devices—smartphones, laptops, tablets—to extend their usability and minimize electronic waste. Ultimately, we want a fully circular economy where devices continue to circulate on the market for as long as possible. We have given credibility to the refurbishment industry and that's why retailers and MNOs have adopted it."

The event concluded with a call to action for businesses, consumers, and regulators to work together to create an ecosystem that fosters a circular economy in the consumer electronics sector. In regards to this, Manuel Nieto Arias, Co-Founder at First Drop VC mentioned that “for an impact investment thesis, it is crucial that purpose is deeply embedded in the founding team. This ensures that even if the value proposition evolves, sustainability remains at the core of the vision.” On his part, Àlex Corbacho, Co-founder at Ealyx, who also participated in a fireside chat alongside Nieto Arias, added that “at Ealyx, we strongly believe that the key to mass adoption lies in disrupting processes or technologies rather than altering consumer habits. That’s why our trade-in concept maintains the ownership paradigm —unlike subscription models— while making the value of products highly liquid and accessible.”