To extend its Prime services beyond the main site, Amazon has announced a new initiative called Buy With Prime. The service will let merchants who ship products using Amazon warehouses add a Buy With Prime button to their sites allowing customers to shop with Prime benefits. 

The service will initially be invitation-only for merchants already using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and will roll out through 2022 as more merchants are invited to participate, including those not selling on Amazon or not using FBA. 

All of this doesn’t come for free, though. Merchants using the Buy With Prime service will have to pay a certain sum based on service, payment processing, and fulfilment and storage fees calculated per unit. Amazon does say that there are no fixed subscription fees or long-term contracts required. 

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Stepping beyond Amazon.com

For Prime subscribers, the Amazon service benefits, namely free shipping, next-day delivery and free returns, will be available on third-party sites across the internet. Members will also be able to use the payment methods and shipping information stored in their Amazon accounts at checkout and receive shipping and delivery notifications as they come. 

The move has more to do with logistics rather than the e-commerce store’s growth while at the same time giving rival e-commerce platform Shopify some fierce competition. 

Shopify has done rather well against Amazon thanks to its plan of offering small and mid-sized businesses the ability to set up their storefronts without much effort, replicating Amazon’s ease and simplicity but without the oversight that comes with listing one’s product on Amazon or the threat of Amazon duplicating your product and selling it under its AmazonBasics brand.

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