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Ecwid, a Russian company which bills itself as a leader in social commerce software, made bold move to bolster its client base by reaching an agreement with competitor Payvment to take 200,000 of the latter company’s customers. 

Ecwid, which is based in California and Ulyanovsk, Russia, was founded by Ruslan Fazlyev, and has become a major player in the social commerce software business, with 250,000 clients in 174 countries. This move comes as Payvment announces that it will be shuttering its deals-site Lish and its own site on March 1st. As TheNextWeb reported, the transfer of the clients will not occur automatically, but will instead go through once clients have manually moved their accounts. 

One of the most important challenges for businesses on Facebook has been to discover a way to take advantage of the social network’s enormous user base. With reportedly over a billion users and counting, businesses can use Facebook to market themselves to a seemingly endless amount of potential customers. Ecwid helps businesses to monetize their websites by providing a widget which enables them to set up a virtual storefront. The widget allows businesses to create a virtual storefront on any site, and it is also available for Facebook stores. Last March, Ecwid reported that 15% of revenue for small and medium-sized businesses came from their Facebook stores. According to Fazlyev, sales from all Ecwid-powered Facebook stores increased by 65% over the previous quarter, and in total the company grew 185 percent in 2012. 

Payvment previously claimed to be a leader in this industry and just bit the dust. While Facebook users may enjoy interacting with businesses, the challenge remains to lure them into buying. Payvment’s failure is not necessarily an indication that there is little future for the social commerce industry, and Ecwid’s Fazlyev remains bullish as ever on Fcommerce, as is Runa Capital that has backed the startup last year with $1,5 million in funding.

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