San Francisco, Feb 17 (IANS): Amazon has quietly acquired Selz, an Australia-based e-commerce platform that helps businesses to have their own online stores.

"We have signed an agreement to be acquired by Amazon and are looking forward to working with them as we continue to build easy-to-use tools for entrepreneurs," Martin Rushe, CEO and Founder of Selz, said in a blog post.

"Nothing is changing for our customers at this time, and we'll be in touch with customers as and when we have further updates."

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the acquisition without disclosing the terms of the deal, CNBC reported on Tuesday.

Amazon made the acquisition on January 15, but it did not make it public.

The acquisition of Selz could give Amazon an edge over e-commerce enabler like Shopify which has seen its business flourishing during the pandemic as e-commerce grew due the restrictions related to Covid-19.

It also shows Amazon's efforts to build the e-commerce ecosystem at a time when the company's third-party marketplace where merchants need to pay commissions on sales besides delivery fees, continues to thrive.

Amazon earlier used to run a service similar to Shopify, called Amazon Webstore, a platform that allowed companies to leverage Amazon technology and expertise in building and managing their direct-to-consumer business.

But Amazon Webstore was shut down in 2015.