Back in February, I wrote about buySAFE and said that company should hook up with a shopping comparison engine:

I think it would be a wise for the comparison engines to partner with buySAFE and offer the bonded service as another way to increase clickthrough and conversion rates. This would be especially useful for the small, non-brand name businesses who make up the majority of the merhcants on the shopping enignes, but probably a minority of all clickthroughs.

The company didn’t exactly take my advice, but it might have done something a bit smarter. Last week buySAFE introduced BondMyWebsite, extending the bonded offering buySAFE has been providing on auction sites, directly to merchants. Well, BondMyWebsite isn’t exactly taking applications from merchants just yet, but is working with ecommerce solution providers like Zoovy (the first partner). Expect a direct merchant offering soon…but this route is probably smarter…why go after a 100,000 merchants when you can target 30 large solution providers?

As for pricing, there is the traditional bonded auction model where buySAFE takes a percentage of the sale, but buySAFE will also offer its protection as an upsell during the checkout process and give a commission to the merchant. This will work in the same way an expedited shipping option is presented to the buyer.

The buySAFE website has a Take Action Now section where eBay/Overstock sellers can quickly and easily send an email to their ecommerce provider (Yahoo! Stores, Marketworks, GoDaddy, and MonsterCommerce, etc.) encouraging them to work with buySAFE.

Read the official press release for more information about buySAFE Website Bonding.

OK, now that the details are out of the way, I have to ask why none of the shopping comparison engines have partnered with buySAFE yet. The obvious deal is with eBay’s Shopping.com as buySAFE already works with eBay and Shopping.com merchants are used to these fee based upsells to improve clickthrough rates.