ShopSavvy taps into Best Buy’s API for better, faster mobile shopping

Shopsavvy is about to get a lot more useful for Best Buy shoppers. The two companies will announce tomorrow that the Shopsavvy mobile app, which you can use to scan and compare items from retail and online stores, has tapped into Best Buy’s API to let you research items faster and make purchases from the retailer’s online store.

Best Buy is already working with ShopSavvy to bring its product information and reviews into the mobile app, but this integration with the company’s BBYOpen API is a major step forward. Now you’ll be able to search for items on ShopSavvy within a Best Buy store and get them shipped to you within a few clicks. And thanks to the API integration, searching all of Best Buy’s data is much faster. (In-store pickup for purchases isn’t available yet, but that will likely appear down the line.)

“We really try to bring our products to where customers are,” Steve Bendt, the director of Best Buy’s emerging platforms (the group behind the BBYOpen API), told VentureBeat in an interview. He pointed out that partnering with apps like ShopSavvy is a major growth area for Best Buy, and the company has also built up a strong developer network taking advantage of the API.

“There’s more choice than ever today in how you shop for things,” Bendt said. “We need to be there. We’ve got an amazing store network that provides realtime fulfillment that we’re taking advantage of.”

The Shopsavvy app also offers mobile purchasing within its app from retailers such as Walmart, Home Depot, and Barnes & Noble.

The app started out as a simple price-comparison tool on Android, but it has since grown into one of the most popular options for mobile shopping on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. The ShopSavvy app has been downloaded more than 40 million times and has more than 10 million active users, the company claims. ShopSavvy is also exploring new territory with its mobile app — earlier this year it launched a mobile marketplace to take on Craigslist.

ShopSavvy has offices in San Francisco and Dallas and has thus far raised a total of $11.5 million. Its latest funding round was led by Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin.