ShopCloseBuy is a shared, Community eCommerce and Marketing Platform developed to support communities. We believe that strengthening the business community as a whole benefits everyone and results in enhanced community economic development, especially in rural areas.
ShopCloseBuy was created as a versatile E-commerce platform for business, non-profit organization, entrepreneurs, artists and farmers. We built in a number of features to support this varied group of vendors including pre-order and promo only listings, and parent/subvendor relationships for membership organizations like Arts Councils and Farmer's Markets.
There are some restricted businesses and items that we are not able to support on ShopCloseBuy as they are not supported by our Payment Gateway Provide, Bambora. For a list of these restricted businesses and items, please go to https://www.bambora.com/en/ca/restricted-businesses/
ShopCloseBuy is committed to supporting businesses to survive and thrive using E-commerce to attract and serve new customers. The shared nature of ShopCloseBuy, which is similar to Amazon but with a local spin, results in shared marketing and cross-promotional opportunities for participating vendors
ShopCloseBuy has been designed to highlight the goods and services of individual vendors or to view the offerings of All Vendors through a vendor drop down list. Integrated social media sharing drives traffic back to individual vendor offerings while at the same time cross-promoting other vendors on the platform. As a shared Community eCommerce platform, ShopCloseBuy promotes all that is available in a given community. It can be a "Shop Local" alternative to other eCommerce platforms that siphon local resources out of the community and/or it can be used to attract tourists to the area and entice non-residents to become customers.
There is a one time setup fee of $235 to join the platform and then a monthly fee of $40 which includes access to your Bambora payment gateway account for e-commerce transactions and the benefit of shared marketing initiatives on the platform. Bambora will also charge a standard transaction fee of 2.9% of sales plus $0.25/transaction.
When you set up your account with Bambora, you provide them with your bank account information. They take the initial setup fee from your account when they approve your application. The monthly fee is taken on the 15th day of the month following the month to which it is applied (e.g. on November 15th, they will take $40 to cover the fee for October).
Revenue earned through transactions on ShopCloseBuy will be transferred to your bank account within 3 business days, minus the transaction fees ($0.25 plus 2.9%).