Bigcommerce, Square Combine Online, Offline Product Inventory

Expanding upon an existing partnership, cloud-based e-commerce provider Bigcommerce and mobile card acceptance provider Square Inc. will offer retailers a new way to manage inventory from physical and online stores.

Retailers should be able to make more products available online through the companies' synchronized inventory and a feature to automatically import a product catalog from Square, Bigcommerce said in an Oct. 5 press release.

In offering the new service, Austin-based Bigcommerce said 50% of retail businesses spend more than three hours each week synching online and offline orders and inventory, with as many 10% spending more than 10 hours each week.

Square and Bigcommerce entered an initial partnership earlier this year, providing an option for Square's small and micro merchants to establish a presence in e-commerce.

Merchants using the new synchronization will see inventory levels adjust after every sale, Bigcommerce said. Business owners are also able to manually adjust stock levels through the Bigcommerce control panel and see it update automatically in Square.

Last month, Bigcommerce announced its support of Twitter's buy button, bringing its network of nearly 100,000 e-commerce merchants the potential to accept payments within Tweets.

BigCommerce has also landed a deal this year with PayPal to expand PayPal's One Touch instant checkout service through Bigcommerce's platform.