Alibaba’s AliExpress expands services in Brazil

The company saw rapid adoption from the mass market in the past year.

Alibaba’s online marketplace, AliExpress, is expanding its services in Brazil, from payments options to delivery networks, as e-commerce takes off in Latin America’s largest e-commerce market, according to a news release.

AliExpress recently launched an online portal for Brazilian merchants for consumers looking to shop digitally during the country’s third wave of the pandemic. With this, the country’s small and medium enterprises will now be able to handle local transactions.

The company entered Latin America nearly a decade ago to allow local buyers to purchase products directly from sellers and manufacturers abroad. The platform’s “local-to-local” initiative began globally in early 2019.

When AliExpress entered Brazil, early adopters were mainly high-income, highly educated urban consumers living in metropolitan areas, such as São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. But this has shifted during the pandemic.

“During the past year, the overall profile of our new users has shifted to reflect Brazil’s mainstream consumers, which means the mass market is starting to adopt online and cross-border shopping,” said Ken Huang, the company’s head of user growth in Latin America.