Along with PayPal and many recent acquisitions, the web giant plans online and offline platform spanning mobile, web and social locatio
In the recent flurry of activity surrounding mobile payments, the obvious player to rewrite the rules, PayPal owner eBay, has been rather quiet. But now the company has made a move, acquiring full ownership of ecommerce platform Magento, and no doubt looking for the same kind of impact that PayPal had on online payments. With Magento and a string of other acquisitions, it aims to emulate Visa and build a broad system that will span mobile, online, social and local payments.
eBay is calling this system X.Commerce and is setting up a business division dedicated to it. This will create an open platform that support payments and end-to-end services to merchants, connecting them to consumers in an increasingly targeted, and even hyperlocal, way. Bringing Magento together with PayPal and GSI - a digital ecommerce and marketing firm which eBay is currently acquiring - will put most of those X.Commerce elements in place.
Magento offers an open source commerce software platform, one of the most popular systems for merchants to build online storefronts based on easily customizable templates. The company has more recently added a 'software as a service' hosted offering called Magento Go. eBay already owned 49% of the firm - which it bought for $22.5m in early 2010 - but has now taken full control for undisclosed terms and expects to finalize the deal in the third quarter.
Other relevant purchases recently have included RedLaser, Milo, WHERE and Fig Card, which add many aspects of social/local shopping, a key driver of mobile commerce and an area where the web players are ahead of the traditional financial giants. RedLaser specializes in comparison shopping; Milo links customers to a local inventory of products; WHERE added a location-based advertising network plus a local deals service and guides; and Fig Card is a competitor to offline payments start-up Square. And PayPal itself is working on its own mobile and point-of-sale offerings, leveraging its strong brand.
"Technology driven innovation is blurring the lines between online and offline commerce, changing the way consumers shop, and enabling retailers of all sizes to benefit from the latest innovations from the developer community," said eBay CEO John Donahoe in a statement. "We believe the acquisition of Magento and creation of our X.Commerce group will enable us to meet developers' needs and drive global commerce innovation for retailers and consumers."
Source: http://twe.ly/W3mb
