Ruten.com (露天拍賣) is to team up with eBay Inc to provide easier access to US products sold on its platform in Taiwan, the online auction operator said last week.
Initially, eBay is to introduce 13 million US products on the ruten.com Web site, with members to be able to search for items in Chinese on the site and pay with Taiwan-issued credit cards, Ruten said.
People can also make inquiries in Chinese to US vendors through the Web site, as they would be translated into English, it said.
Ruten is a subsidiary of PChome Online Inc (網路家庭), the nation’s largest e-commerce operator.
“EBay is the most well-known Internet exchange market globally ... both teams have cooperated intensively on technical issues and platform services to render cross-border transactions effortless,” PChome Online chairman Jan Hung-tze (詹宏志) said on Tuesday.
EBay Asia-Pacific senior vice president Jooman Park said that the cooperation is entirely focused on Taiwanese customers.
The number of eBay items sold on Ruten’s site is expected to increase in the near future, Park said.
Ruten said the cross-border services exemplify the progress it has achieved through Rutopia, a workshop established in 2017 to focus on developing artificial intelligence services for the online platform.
The company is planning similar partnerships with other US and European e-commerce platforms, it said.
Ruten has more than 11 million members and its online platform recorded a gross merchandise volume of more than NT$330.5 billion (US$10.72 billion at the current exchange rate) as of the end of last year.
More than 380 million products are available on its Web site, the company said.
Separately, PChome on Friday announced an exclusive e-commerce deal with Walt Disney Co (Taiwan) Ltd (台灣華特迪士尼) to capitalize on Avengers: Endgame, which is to be released on Wednesday.
It is implementing new market strategies to combine entertainment with consumption, PChome said, adding that it is the third time the company has cooperated with Walt Disney, but the first time for an Avengers movie.
The company is to offer Avengers’ merchandise on its platform and install a giant logistics box relating to the movie’s theme at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Plaza (信義香堤大道廣場) in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) to promote the movie, it said.
PChome reported revenue of NT$9.20 billion for the first quarter of the year, a 12.29 percent increase compared with NT$8.21 billion in the same quarter last year.
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