Pinterest makes a push into ecommerce with “Buy” button

First reported by Re/code, Stripe is reported to handle all currency transactions. This is the same service that’s being used by Twitter and Facebook to process purchases. Hypothetically, retailers will be able to take significant advantage of a purchasing function on the company’s official Pinterest page. For instance, a brand like L.L Bean could add the Buy button to all products and attempt to generate sales within the 5.3 million users that follow the company’s page.

It’s likely that Pinterest will limit usage of the Buy button to retailers that are capable of fulfilling orders promptly and leave all communication about the order up to the retailer. Opening up the purchasing function to a larger audience, such as Etsy or eBay sellers, could become problematic due to a larger number of logistics issues with order fulfillment.

It’s also likely that Pinterest will have a significant focus on mobile platforms when launching the Buy button, specifically because 75 percent of all traffic to the site comes through smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

When asked about the new Buy button, a Pinterest representative declined to comment to Re/code. Instead, the representative released a statement which read “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.”