Earlier this year, eBay announced that a new commerce platform called X.commerce that aims to connect a wide variety of online and offline services for merchants, from sales and payments to back-office inventory and financial management tools.
The new platform, also known as X.com, will be a fourth division of the company after eBay Marketplaces, PayPal, and GSI Commerce. The X.commerce division, however, is not just aimed at driving business to the other units, says veteran eBay executive Matthew Mengerink, who is heading X.commerce. Instead, the division’s technology, which is currently known as “X.fabric,” is designed to be an open platform for all companies, he says. X.commerce could benefit eBay’s units if merchants and developers build on the platform and then end up using eBay, PayPal, Magento or the other eBay units as a result.
Mengerink describes X.commerce as a sort of e-commerce (or just overall commerce) operating system, like Linux or Windows or iOS–with eBay, PayPal, Magento and GSI Commerce as programs along with many others that can plug into that OS. EBay plans to fully unveil the details in October at its X.commerce Innovate Developer Conference.
One company working to build its technology on top of the X.commerce platform is start-up Outright, which helps small businesses manage their accounting online. Outright already aggregates data from merchants’ PayPal and eBay accounts and other online sources such as bank accounts and credit cards. Then businesses can quickly review revenue or expense reports and prepare their taxes.
Outright, already one of the top apps on the eBay Marketplace with more than 100,000 registered customers, currently connects merchants to PayPal and eBay (and other companies) through separate sets of API’s. With the new coming X.commerce platform, Outright customers will be able to connect with PayPal, eBay and other applications, such as inventory management systems, with just one set of API’s.
“Small business owners don’t have the time or money or expertise to deal with customized implementations,” Steven Aldrich, Outright CEO, says. “Now (with X.commerce) they will not have to worry about if all the applications and products work together… What this X.fabric will allow us to do over time is tap into one API and get all the data we want. That’ll ideally reduce the maintenance we need on how to keep multiple connections up and running.”
The X.commerce platform will help Outright get data easier, while also providing a marketplace for Outright to get publicized to more customers, Aldrich says. Companies can then focus on what to do with the data rather than spending time figuring out how to get it, he adds. “From our perspective we can the get data need and also get in front of different merchants who can sign up over time,” he says. Outright is now working on the technical specifications with X.commerce to be prepared for the official launch in October.
A key point is that the new X.Commerce platform will enable merchants to more easily integrate offline and online commerce efforts. For example, if a merchant wants to launch a new mobile app, the X.commerce platform would make it easier to plug that app into other existing data such as in-store inventory, current in-store prices, and current special deals, not to mention e-commerce efforts. This is key because many consumers now go into a brick-and-mortar store and see a product but check to see if it’s cheaper on eBay or Amazon before buying it. With more mobile and online integrations with offline stores, merchants could try to capture sales that would otherwise drift away to other merchants. EBay has recently acquired a number of new e-commerce, local or mobile companies that feed into this theme, such as Zong, Where, Milo and RedLaser. (See my story on PayPal going after the point-of-sale business.)
As for how open X.commerce is, eBay is making the platform open to anyone so that even competitors–such as say Amazon–could theoretically plug in to the platform to make it easier for merchants to sell on both eBay and Amazon. As for whether Amazon will want to do that, we’ll have to see. Mengerink also says that X.commerce will not be prohibitively expensive as a platform for developers or merchants to use–pricing details will be announced in October.
The development of X.Commerce is a move towards building technology and focusing on developers, rather than just selling to consumers. The company already has 4,600 Magento developers working on X.com, and hopes more will sign up. It’s part of a “fundamental change in the company and it’s focusing back to core technology,” Mengerink says. “It’s the biggest move to be a technology-driven company in the last 10 years of our existence.”
