Amazon tacks on new Buy With Prime features ahead of peak holiday shopping

By Arriana McLymore

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com is adding package tracking and return services for subscription members who use Buy With Prime, ahead of the holiday shopping season when it will face competition from new marketplaces including Shein and Tik Tok Shop.

Buy With Prime, which launched in 2022, gives retailers who are not Amazon merchants fulfillment and delivery through its logistics network. Its newest features aim to pull in fee revenue from shops outside of Amazon.com during the peak holiday season.

U.S. shoppers are expected to spend between $273.7 billion and $278.8 billion online this holiday season, an increase between 7% and 9%, according to the National Retail Federation.

Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of Buy with Prime, said the company is seeing some non-Amazon merchants who use Buy With Prime sign up to be third-party sellers after seeing more sales.

Along with speedy deliveries, Prime shoppers can now return items purchased through Buy With Prime outside of Amazon.com without shipping labels and boxes. The perk was previously only available to orders made through the e-commerce platform.

Amazon also announced that Prime customers who buy from Buy With Prime merchants can now see their order history on their apps and have 24-hour access to customer service representatives.

Amazon last week launched a Shopify app for Buy With Prime, giving the Canadian e-commerce giant's 2 million merchants access to Amazon's 175 million Prime members.

(Reporting by Arriana McLymore in New York City; Editing by Stephen Coates)