Stripe is making a play to be the backbone of the buy button industry.
The payments processing startup unveiled a new feature Monday to help merchants display their products across multiple third-party apps, incorporating buy buttons for a more seamless purchasing experience. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Google have all launched similar efforts to try to cash in on the lucrative e-commerce market, a marketplace that still struggles with clunky mobile tools.
Stripe said 60 percent of traffic to shopping sites comes from mobile devices, but only 15 percent of purchases. That’s a huge opportunity for retailers, but the prospect of dealing with multiple platforms and partners is daunting. Stripe’s new feature, called Relay, aims to provide a one-stop shop, an API that enables merchants to load their catalogues once and serve them throughout the online world.
“For retailers, there are too many different apps, too many channels that they can integrate with directly. [Relay] helps merchants sell in multiple places with a single integration,” Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said at the company’s launch event Monday in San Francisco.
Stripe hopes to be the go-between between retailers and third-party apps and platforms. How well it does depends on how many social platforms come on board. Stripe has worked with Facebook to power its buy button testing. It has worked with Pinterest as well, but Recode reported that Pinterest is not using Relay.
Twitter was the lone social network announced as a partner this week. Saks Fifth Avenue and Warby Parker are among the retail brands on board at launch. Shopping apps Spring and ShopStyle are also partners.
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