Shopify and Amazon’s Buy with Prime are engaged in a quiet internet conflict
Early this year, Amazon introduced the Buy with Prime service. Shopify appears to be opposing the feature that warns retailers installing the Buy with Prime service will render them less protected against fraudulent activity.
The Shopify warning pops up when merchants try to add the Buy with Prime button to their page, reported Marketplace Pulse.
A Shopify spokesperson told CNBC, “Shopify believes it’s a good thing when a company like Amazon opens their infrastructure to more independent businesses to succeed in commerce.”
The pop-up script states that Shopify Fraud Protection will not be guaranteed and alerts that adding the Amazon service could steal customer data and potentially cause customers to be charged the wrong amount.
Shopify is facing a slump in stock price of 77 percent, they were also forced to carry out mass layoffs this year.
Buy with Prime poses as direct competition to Shopify’s business model, when customers choose Buy with Prime, the order is wholly managed and fulfilled by Amazon while other payment methods places orders via Shopify.
Buy with Prime operates with a fairly simple system, the button can be added to potentially any website or e-commerce store by an input of two HTML lines, the only way Shopify can prevent this is by scanning the template code which is what Shopify seems to have started doing.
According to a notice from Shopify to sellers obtained by Marketplace Pulse, “You have a code snippet on your shop that violates Shopify’s Terms of Service.”
The rules of service for Shopify mandate that customers utilise Shopify Checkout “for all sales related with your online store,” which appears to discourage retailers from providing additional checkout options.
