Ecwid, a leading provider of social commerce solutions based in Ulyanovsk, Russia, and US social commerce pioneer Payvment, have announced that Payvment will refer its 200,000 Facebook merchants to the Ecwid platform.
The move comes as a consequence of the acquisition of Payvment by Intuit, a Silicon Valley software publisher. Intuit was essentially interested in Payvment’s human resources, technology, and patents, not in its social commerce business, Ecwid’s press service explained to East-West Digital News.
While Payvment is closing its service, Ecwid will strengthen its position as the leader in social commerce software. The Russian startup claims it already stands as the leading Facebook storefront provider by number of active users.
Ecwid’s cloud-based e-commerce widget can be embedded into any web, blog or Facebook page. Using Ecwid’s Facebook app, merchants can add a full-featured store to any Facebook page with a few clicks, enabling their customers to discover products via social media and make purchases without ever leaving Facebook.
Aggregate data from all merchants using Ecwid’s Facebook application has shown strong, consistent growth over the last year. For example, in the holiday shopping period from October through December, 2012, total sales from all Ecwid-powered Facebook stores grew 65% from the previous quarter.
Data from the same period also showed that referral (inbound) links from Facebook to Ecwid-powered stores accounted for as much as 8.5 percent of purchases during the holiday shopping period, demonstrating the influence of social referrals on purchase transactions.
Before the agreement with Payvment, Ecwid, whose solution is available in over 40 languages, claimed over 250,000 registered merchants in 174 countries.
In late 2011, the company secured a $1.5 million investment from Runa Capital, a Russian venture fund operating internationally.
