Dive Brief:

• Bigcommerce, which specializes in creating online storefronts for small businesses, is set to acquire Zing, a checkout software and inventory management startup. 
• Bigcommerce has also partnered with Square and Lightspeed POS in recent months to introduce its e-commerce software to brick-and-mortar locations. 
• Bigcommerce is in competition with Shopify, which has filed for an IPO and has roughly twice as many merchant partners. 

Dive Insight:

Bigcommerce is set to acquire Zing, a software startup concentrating on checkout and inventory management. The acquisition promises to bring Bigcommerce’s e-commerce software into more physical retail store locations, helping client businesses track inventory and customer data online and offline.

As eBay and Amazon have left the space, Bigcommerce has forged partnerships with Square and Lightspeed POS to keep up with its main competitor, Shopify. Shopify filed papers with the Securities & Exchange Commission to issue an IPO earlier this month and currently services 160,000 merchants; Bigcommerce claims 85,000.