Sale now on! Now anyone can add a Buy button to Twitter

Buy buttons are not exactly new to Twitter, but until now they have only been available to a limited number of users. Now, thanks to San Francisco-based Stripe, anyone is able to use a tweet to sell a product.

Stripe has launched a new service called Relay. It is a set of tools that can be used to sell through any app that makes use of Stripe -- and that includes Twitter. Relay can be used to allow for instant purchases, and address what Stripe perceives to be a problem with mobile e-commerce sites.

The Relay APIs offered by Stripe allow a shopping experience to be integrated into just about any third-party app, and Twitter and Pinterest are among those that offer support at the moment. As well as instant purchases for single items, the API can be used to provide a store experience that links into an existing shopping platform.

Introducing Relay, Stripe says:

Over the past year, a number of companies have worked to bring this kind of experience to e-commerce, pulling products from many stores into the very apps where users are already spending their time [...] We’re trying out something new. We’re launching Relay, an API for stores to publish their products, and for apps to read them. Relay makes it easier for developers to build great mobile e-commerce experiences, and for stores to participate in them.

The tweet below from Warby Parker shows how the buy buttons work:

So... is Twitter ready to be turned into a marketplace for all and sundry? Do web users need another outlet through which to relieve themselves of their money? If you like the idea of selling through Twitter, you can use the Stripe dashboard to get started.

Photo credit: enciktepstudio  / Shutterstock