Amazon, Snapchat team up to offer image-based shopping

Snapchat is teaming up with Amazon.com Inc. to let users of its social-media app buy products based on what they see through their smartphone's camera lenses.

Snapchat's mobile app opens up to a camera, which people can use to send disappearing images and videos to their friends. Now, users will be able to point the Snapchat camera at a product they see in the real world to scan its image or barcode. If Amazon recognises the item, it will present a link to purchase it on the retail giant's app or website, parent company Snap Inc. said Monday in a blog post.

The shopping tool, which is only available to a small set of users in the U.S. for now, could eventually present another source of revenue for the troubled social-media company. The Los Angeles-based company, which went public at $17 a share last year, has posted disappointing revenue growth and user additions in some recent quarters. The company declined to comment on its financial relationship with Amazon.

Amazon and rival EBay Inc. both already have visual search functions. The pairing with Snap helps Amazon encourage use of visual search with younger shoppers and helps keep Snapchatters from straying to competing commerce sites. The accord could also help Amazon make its site easier to navigate. With hundreds of millions of products to comb through, using text search can be cumbersome when shoppers aren't sure precisely how to describe what they want. A photo can deliver relevant results more quickly.

The move is part of a broader trend to incorporate smartphone cameras into commerce by using image-recognition technology to streamline the searching and shopping process. Pinterest Inc. has a similar tool to shop for items or search for ideas via images. Online marketplace EBay is using smartphones to let merchants simply point their cameras at products and then auto-populate fields such as brand and product description, and even to suggest prices and the best box size. Seattle-based Amazon and others are also using smartphones and augmented reality to let shoppers point their cameras at their living rooms, for example, to see how a new couch might look inside before they buy it.