Mercado Eletronico, a Sâo Paulo, Brazil-based-based company that channels some $25 billion a year in online trading between buyers and suppliers, has launched an electronic procurement portal for more than 1 million registered companies.

The new ProcurePro portal brings an e-commerce marketplace to Mercado’s range of procurement and supply chain management software applications. “The main difference in the new portal is to ensure buyers the same experience they would have in a portal of [business-to-consumer] e-commerce, focused on the end user,” CEO Eduardo Nader says. “Just add items to the cart and integrate the request in its formal procurement process and use a corporate card to conduct operations.”

Nader adds that Mercado designed ProcurePro with “a simple and intuitive” site navigation, letting customers search on a particular product to find all available suppliers and prices.

Mercado ProcurePro portal and other software applications are used by companies to trade “more than 500,000” registered products, including office supplies, construction materials and automotive products, Nader says.

Mercado charges suppliers fees based on their volume of transactions, Nader says. Some buyers on the portal also pay fees, depending on their level of services used, he adds.

Mercado doesn’t publicly say how many of its more than 1 million registered users are buyers and how many are suppliers.

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