Twitter Testing ‘Buy’ Button in Latest E-Commerce Play (Sept. 9, 2014)
Twitter is testing a “buy” button that merchants embed in their tweets. The new service will be available initially to “a small percentage of U.S. users” and will focus, at first, on selling time-sensitive items, like concert tickets, Twitter said in a blog post. After tapping the “buy” button, users will get additional product details and be prompted to enter payment and shipping information, which go to the merchant. Stored information is encrypted and can always be removed from user accounts, Twitter said. The company’s partners on the new service include payments processor Stripe Inc., social shopping platform Fancy and e-retail providers Gumroad and Musictoday.
The “buy” button is Twitter’s latest—and most direct—foray into e-commerce, but the company has launched several retail initiatives recently. In May, Twitter partnered with Amazon to debut a service that enables users to click a special hashtag to mark any Amazon product link for purchase. And in July, Twitter acquired CardSpring, an application platform that enables retailers to link offers to payment cards. But Twitter isn’t the only big name looking to blur the line between social media and commerce; Facebook has experimented with many shopping initiatives, including launching a buy button of its own in July.
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