Naver to challenge Amazon in Spain with its Smart Store platform

South Korea’s Naver Corp. is taking its online shopping platform Smart Store to Spain to support small merchants there and challenge Amazon, the largest e-commerce operator in the country with over 20 percent market share.

Naver is also seeking support from the Spanish government for the project.

Smart Store provides smaller retailers with a site for e-commerce, payment and settlement systems, and other tools for online transactions.

Sources said the Smart Store platform will help smaller merchants in Spain conduct sales and marketing activities on the Spanish virtual marketplace Wallapop, where Naver invested €115 million this year.

The Barcelona-based Wallapop, of the four largest shopping apps in Spain, lets people resell their used items, or sell items such as crafts they make themselves.

Wallapop's users account for about half of Spain's population.

Combining Smart Store and Wallapop will help enhance Naver's presence in Spain's e-commerce market, which is among the world’s top 10 with a size of $21.4 billion as of 2020.

Analysts said Naver will be competing with Amazon in Europe and Sea Limited in Southeast Asia.

Sea Limited is a Singaporean internet company that operates Shopee, SeaMoney, Garena and a football club Lion City Sailors FC.