Payvment Referring Its Facebook Merchants to Ecwid

  Payvment Referring Its Facebook Merchants to Ecwid

Company Will Direct Its 200,000 Facebook Sellers to Use Ecwid’s Facebook Store
                                     App

Business Wire

SAN DIEGO & PALO ALTO, Calif. -- January 28, 2013

Ecwid, Inc, the leading Facebook storefront provider by number of active
users, and Payvment, the social commerce platform with the most Facebook
storefronts, announce an agreement whereby Payvment will refer its subscribers
to transfer their Facebook stores to Ecwid’s Facebook platform. As a result
of this agreement, Ecwid will strengthen its position as the leader in social
commerce software.

Ecwid will be adding to its existing community of over 250,000 merchants in
174 countries by acquiring sellers referred by Payvment, which announced today
it would be closing its social commerce service on February 28, 2013. Payvment
established the partnership with Ecwid to ensure that its customers have a
smooth transition, and can continue selling successfully on Facebook and other
online properties.

“Payvment’s sellers are pioneers in social selling, creating loyal
relationships with Facebook customers by using the latest social media
technology and techniques,” says Jim Stoneham, CEO of Payvment. “Ecwid’s
e-commerce technology will not only enable our merchants to keep selling on
Facebook, but also allow them the opportunity open up new channels by placing
a store anywhere their customers shop online.”

Ecwid’s cloud-based e-commerce widget can be embedded into any web, blog or
Facebook page in minutes. 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.

“Payvment has helped Facebook commerce mature and become a productive
marketplace for retailers, particularly small businesses,” says Jim O’Hara,
president of Ecwid, Inc. “We are excited to partner with Payvment, and are
anxious to support their sellers as they begin doing business through their
Facebook stores using Ecwid’s platform.”

Growth in Facebook Commerce: 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 thru December, 2012,
total sales from all Ecwid-powered Facebook stores grew 65 percent 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.

Ecwid is integrated with all major payment gateways including PayPal,
FirstData, Google Wallet and Authorize.net. In addition, Ecwid’s global
partner program makes it easy for hosters and service providers to integrate
Ecwid to offer a world-class e-commerce solution to their respective
customers.

“It’s exciting to be in the sweet spot of the expanding social commerce trend,
as we see our merchants create successful businesses on their Facebook
storefronts,” comments Ecwid CEO and founder Ruslan R. Fazlyev. “The
Russia-based technical team that built Ecwid is the same group that created
F-Cart, the world’s first PHP store builder (which later became X-Cart).
Twelve years later, we’ve shown again that a group of upstarts from the
freezing Russian midlands can gain market leadership with the right product
and proper persistence.”

About Ecwid: Ecwid is an affordable (free plan is available) yet full-featured
cloud-based store-building widget, compatible with any existing web, mobile or
social site and payment system. The Ecwid Facebook app is the world’s leading
shopping cart application on Facebook by active users, with more than 40,000
Facebook stores globally. Ecwid has over 250,000 registered merchants in 174
countries, and is available in over 43 languages.

Ecwid is a trademark of Ecwid, Inc. All other trademarks or registered
trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:

U.S. Press Contacts for Ecwid:
Frank Cioffi, 415-893-1570
frankc@medialinkgroup.com
or
Kristina LeBlanc, 508-930-5636
kristinawleblanc@gmail.com