Amazon Invites More US Merchants to Buy With Prime

Amazon is opening its invite-only Buy With Prime program to a much wider merchant pool.

Beginning Jan. 31, the program will be available to all eligible U.S. merchants, the eCommerce giant said in a news release Tuesday (Jan. 10).

Introduced last April, Buy With Prime lets merchants sell listed products directly from their websites. This perk makes Amazon’s payments and fulfillment services available at checkout, letting shoppers use their Prime membership to get benefits like faster, no-cost delivery.

As PYMNTS noted at the time, the launch came as rival Shopify had been pushing further into Amazon’s turf, focusing on last-mile delivery and purchasing the eCommerce fulfillment firm Deliverr for $2.1 billion.

Amazon said Tuesday that Buy With Prime had benefitted its merchant users, who have seen an average shopper conversion increase of 25%, according to the company’s internal data.

“This data point measures the average increase in shoppers who placed an order when Buy with Prime was an available purchase option versus when it was not, during the same time period,” Amazon said.

Tools like these help consumers save time — 148 million hours’ worth per year – during checkout, as PYMNTS’ 2022 Buy Button Report found. Buy buttons are now used by 73% of merchants, research by PYMNTS shows.

And the technology is becoming more effective as time goes by: in Q2 2022, checkouts via a buy button took an average of 68 seconds, a 17% faster checkout time than these buttons achieved in Q4 2020.

“Merchants already utilizing a buy button on their site may want to see if they can adopt more innovative versions to speed up checkouts,” PYMNTS wrote.

Tuesday’s expansion follows a test by Amazon in September of a series of marketing tools tied to the Buy With Prime program.

As written in this space, third-party marketplaces have become a crucial battleground in the rivalry between Amazon and Walmart.

Walmart reported in August that its marketplace seller count had increased 60% year on year and that its marketplaces attract 120 million monthly visitors. And like Amazon, Walmart has also debuted a tool to help third-party sellers connect with shoppers on its platform.

Hours after the launch of Buy With Prime last year, Walmart announced its own upgraded outreach to help sellers connect with shoppers. These include a “Search Brand Amplifier,” a faster onboarding process at the Walmart Ad Center and more application programming interfaces (APIs) to service international sellers.

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