Here is a list of product releases and updates for late-January from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on voice shopping, managed hosting, customer service solutions, personalized emails, and zero-fraud payments.
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Ecommerce Product Releases
Voicelabs launches Alpine to bring retailers to the voice shopping ecosystem. Voice-computing company Voicelabs is launching Alpine.AI, a voice-shopping app for retailers. Alpine works by importing a retailer’s catalog, then layering artificial-intelligence technology to answer voice queries from consumers and directing them towards purchase. Contact for pricing.
Alpine
WhatsApp launches business app. Free messaging and calling app WhatsApp has launched the WhatsApp Business, a free-to-download Android app for small businesses. The new app is intended to make it easier for companies to connect with customers, providing business profiles, messaging tools like quick replies and greeting messages, messaging statistic, business accounts, and more.
Amazon launches “$10 & Under” with free shipping. Amazon has recently launched a new section that offers products under $10 that ship for free. The “$10 & Under” section is listed on the mobile app and on the web, under “All Programs” in the main navigation. Some of the products are also available on Prime, but the products are not limited to Prime subscribers. The new section appears to be directed at competing discount shopping apps, such as Wish and others.
Liquid Web announces the launch of managed WooCommerce hosting. Liquid Web, a provider of managed hosting and managed application services to small-to-midsize businesses and web professionals, has launched a platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores. Liquid Web’s Managed WooCommerce Hosting enables merchants to access an affordable online store solution. Contact for pricing.
Liquid Web
UPS Capital announces cargo finance service enhancements for small and mid-sized businesses. UPS Capital, a subsidiary of UPS, has announced the expansion of UPS Capital Cargo Finance, with new options on in-transit cargo for U.S. importers. The enhanced offering increases the amount a business can borrow from 70 percent of the supplier’s commercial invoice to 100 percent. Other enhancements include repayment terms up to 90 days rather than 75 days, an unsecured credit line that won’t interfere with existing banking relationships, and more competitive interest rates for eligible companies shipping with UPS.
Manhattan Associates introduces customer engagement solution. Manhattan Associates, a player in supply chain and omnichannel commerce, has announced a service that gives retailers new insight into individual shopping experiences. Part of the Manhattan Active Omni platform, Manhattan Customer Engagement connects customer conversations on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, with real-time order information to give associates a complete and accurate picture of each customer’s buying journey.
Maropost launches Sales Cloud. Maropost, a developer of marketing and sales automation technology, has launched its Sales Cloud platform, combining customer management, commerce, acquisition, referral management, sales automation, and service modules. Maropost Sales Cloud eliminates the need for organizations of every size to acquire multiple, disparate solutions for the management their various business functions. Contact for pricing.
CardinalCommerce and 3dcart announce ecommerce technology collaboration. CardinalCommerce, a player in authenticated payment transactions, has announced a collaboration with 3dcart, an ecommerce platform. CardinalCommerce 3-D Secure 2.0 protections will be integrated into 3dcart. By working with Cardinal, 3dcart gains a 3-D Secure authentication service for its customers, who can add Cardinal Consumer Authentication, Cardinal’s 3-D Secure technology plug-in, to their 3dcart dashboard. As merchants enable CardinalCommerce, issuing banks gain greater insight into transactions to further identify fraud, as well as ensuring that good customers are not declined.
CardinalCommerce
Commercetools announces integration of its microservices commerce platform into Adobe Experience Cloud. Commercetools has announced it is one of the first commerce platform vendors to integrate with Adobe’s new commerce microservices capabilities for Adobe Experience Cloud. With its cloud-native, microservices architecture, the Commercetools’ platform provides an optimal pairing for Adobe’s new commerce microservices capabilities. The combination of Adobe’s commerce microservices capabilities plus Commercetools’ platform gives retailers and brands new degrees of flexibility and agility. Every customer touch point in-store or online can be interactions of deeper engagement and enabled for commerce.
Reflektion announces behavioral email solution and partnerships with Oracle Responsys and Bronto. Reflektion, an artificial-intelligence-powered personalization platform for the retail industry, has announced its behavioral email service and new strategic partnerships with Oracle Responsys and Bronto. The service, complete with individualized email triggers such as abandoned cart and abandoned browse, among others, equips retailers to deliver an engaging and relevant email experience. Combined with its individualized email merchandising solution, which automatically embeds individually-relevant product and content into retailers’ promotional emails, Reflektion now offers a suite of email solutions aimed at making content hyper-relevant to each recipient.
Instacart acquires Unata. Instacart, a nationwide on-demand grocery delivery service, has announced it has acquired Unata, a provider of 1-to-1 digital solutions for grocers. Together, the companies plan to enable the future of online grocery shopping. The acquisition, which bridges Unata’s comprehensive white-label digital grocery platform with Instacart’s established technology and scale, will create a one-stop shop for brick-and-mortar retailers to compete in an increasingly online world.
Bolt launches an all-in-one payments platform with Amazon-like checkout and zero-fraud guarantee. Aiming to re-engineer ecommerce for online retail merchants and consumers, Bolt has launched its all-in-one payments platform has after operating in stealth for a year with over 100 large online merchants. Bolt provides end-to-end payment processing. Data collected across the Bolt stack can be used to train superior fraud detection algorithms. Bolt’s intelligent anti-fraud technology allows more qualified transactions to occur and has access to more data across checkout and payment processes.
Bolt