TikTok Establishes New Deal with Amazon To Facilitate In-App Purchases
On connecting your Amazon account, you can see real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, and delivery estimates, all within the TikTok listings.
Topics
TikTok’s still trying to get people to buy more things in the app, this time via a new integration with Amazon that will enable TikTok users to make an Amazon purchase in-stream, without having to tap through to the Amazon app or website.
Amazon’s new partnership with TikTok will facilitate more direct integration between the two apps. Pinterest has also signed up to a similar arrangement with the commerce giant, though only TikTok has made an official announcement as yet.
As per TikTok, “Users can now seamlessly discover and purchase their favourite products from Amazon directly within the TikTok app. This shopping experience is powered by Amazon through ads placed on TikTok and allows users to complete product purchases with Amazon in TikTok’s native environment.”
So now, when TikTok users see Amazon product recommendations within their “For You” feed, they’ll be able to make a purchase then and there, which is facilitated by linking your TikTok profile to your Amazon account, “through a secure, quick, and easy one-time set-up.”
With TikTok still under a cloud in the US, due to its perceived links to the Chinese Government, at least some US shoppers will be hesitant to establish a direct connection between their Amazon profile and their TikTok presence, for fear of exposing more of their data to the company.
But TikTok’s hoping that convenience will win out, “Once your accounts are linked, Amazon customers will be able to complete a checkout with Amazon in the product ad without leaving the TikTok app – enabling a faster, more frictionless experience.”
In addition, if you do connect your Amazon account, you’ll be shown real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, and delivery estimates, all within the TikTok listings.
The arrangement in itself is nothing new, with Amazon establishing similar shopping partnerships with Meta and Snapchat late last year. The expansion to TikTok, as well as Pinterest, will provide more ways for Amazon to tap into compulsive social shopping behaviors, in a more streamlined way, with the benefit to the platforms being habitual transformation, in enabling users to buy more things in their apps.
But even so, social commerce is still struggling to gain any real momentum in Western markets, especially in comparison to China, where shopping in social apps, particularly via live streams, has exploded in recent years.
