Pinterest reportedly laying groundwork for e-commerce offering

PanARMENIAN.Net - Pinterest, the digital scrapbooking service, is laying the groundwork for an e-commerce offering with a “Buy” button that could launch in as little as three to six months, Re/code reports, citing sources.

One of the people cautioned Pinterest may wait longer to roll it out, while another said the shopping feature would likely start as a limited test. The Buy button would allow Pinterest users to order and pay for some of the products they discover on Pinterest without leaving the company’s website or app, these people said, according to Re/code.

Currently, Pinterest’s 70 million monthly visitors use the service to save and share images of things like recipes, furniture, food and clothing.

Re/code says a spokeswoman for Pinterest declined to comment on the company’s e-commerce strategy. Instead, the company responded: “Part of our strategy to help people discover new things, save them, and do these things in real life has always been to make Pins more useful.”

To handle the payments processing, Pinterest is close to an agreement with Stripe, a young payments company that has similar arrangements with Facebook and Twitter, according to industry sources.