BigCommerce, a no-code platform to create e-commerce websites, announced that it is partnering with the Latin American e-commerce marketplace Mercado Libre to allow its merchants to sell in Latin America. The partnership entails Mercado Libre providing free currency conversions, language translations, inter-platform merchant onboarding, and order flow management for BigCommerce’s merchants. Big Commerce’s share price jumped 7% yesterday following the announcement. 

Mercado Libre is a leading e-commerce player in Latin America with a customer base of 133 million spanning 18 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. This marks its first partnership with a North American e-commerce marketplace and complements its recent expansion to the US market. 

BigCommerce is a platform for creating e-commerce websites. It allows users to handle shipping, marketing, and payments, among other functions. The platform further assists users in cross-selling through multiple platforms that include Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Instagram. BigCommerce has a large customer base of around 60,000 online stores, with customers based in 120 countries. The company generated USD 152 million in revenue in 2020. 

Analyst Quicktake: This marks BigCommerce’s first significant entry into the growing  Latin American e-commerce market (estimated to reach USD 118 billion in 2021). BigCommerce’s peers, Shopify and Wix, already offer its customers the ability to sell in the region by partnering with local payment partners. Wix has partnered with MercadoPago (Mercado Libre’s payment platform, since 2014) while Shopify partnered with EBANX (a fintech company offering cross-border payments to Latin America, since 2019). While the peers’ partnerships enable merchants to accept local payment from the region, such as domestic credit cards, installments, and local vouchers, BigCommerce’s partnership with Mercado Libre seems to be going a step further by offering merchant onboarding and order flow management.