Microsoft is internally testing cross-border e-commerce platform “Buy With Microsoft”

Microsoft is internally testing a cross-border e-commerce project, Chinese e-commerce news outlet cifnews.com reported on Thursday.

The program, called “Buy with Microsoft,” originally launched on March 22 and is currently only available to its US employees. This would be Microsoft’s first Amazon-like e-commerce platform open to third-party sellers.

Currently, some Chinese sellers have joined the platform, offering household products, 3C, clothing, shoes, and electronic accessories, gardening tools and other products to customers.

Introduction page of Buy with Microsoft （Photo from cifnews)

According to cifnews, during the internal testing stage, only cross-border e-commerce sellers with annual sales of more than $1 million are eligible to enroll in, and the official launch of the project is expected to be between April and May, when more categories will be available to consumers. 

The platform will dispatch seller managers to offer help and support to the seller group, covering everything from online store opening, product selection, training, and so on. Microsoft will also provide sellers with traffic support by integrating resources from Bing Shopping, Edge, MSN, and Windows.

In early March, Microsoft was looking for front-end and back-end engineers at its Suzhou, China office to help with the development of an unnamed cross-border e-commerce project.

Microsoft has been eyeing the e-commerce industry as the sector could be a fruitful market for its Azure to take on Amazon Web Services in cloud infrastructure. In 2020, it launched Dynamics 365 Commerce, an comprehensive e-commerce solution that allows user to build a website, connect physical and digital stores, and track customer behaviors and requirements.