Amazon.com[1] is making a push for merchants on its website to sell goods into other countries, setting the stage for greater competition with rival marketplaces run by eBay[2] and potentially Alibaba Group Holding Ltd[3].
More than a quarter of all revenue for sellers on Amazon globally was from cross-border transactions in 2017, up more than 50 percent from the year prior, Amazon Vice President Eric Broussard said in an interview, ahead of his Tuesday speech at the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas.
That amounts to between $50 billion and $75 billion (roughly Rs. 3.26 and 4.9 lakh crores) for merchants selling to customers in another country, based on analysts' estimates for Amazon's total gross merchandise sales. Amazon does not disclose the figure.
The cross-border increase - outpacing Amazon's 31 percent rise in overall net sales - represents a massive opportunity for the world's largest online retailer. That is why Amazon has encouraged merchants to list ever-more products on its websites around the world, which could make its marketplaces more desirable to shoppers than those of the competition.
"The speed with which sellers have been selling globally has accelerated over time," said Broussard, who oversees Amazon's international marketplaces.
Global trade has been crucial to Amazon and its e-commerce competitors. In a 2015 news post online, eBay touted cross-border sales as one of its key strengths. It said cross-border represented about 20 percent of its gross merchandise volume in 2014, or $17 billion. The company declined to offer a figure for 2017.
Last month, eBay's chief executive told Reuters the company planned to bring "the world's inventory into Japan" as part of its global expansion.
Alibaba, meanwhile, recruits companies to sell into China, and its unit Tmall...