Dive Brief:

• Etsy is making credit-card readers available to its U.S. sellers that sell offline. More than a third of Etsy sellers in the U.S. own shops or sell at retail venues like craft fairs and farmers markets.

• The dongles are plugged into a smartphone or tablet and used with Etsy’s app, but are designed for traditional magnetic strip cards at a time when retailers are moving toward higher-security payments. Etsy’s system tracks and adjusts the seller’s inventory when something is sold.

• Etsy will take 2.75% of each transaction, the same as Square. PayPal charges 2.7%, and Amazon’s Local Register 1.75%, which will rise to 2.5% next year.

Dive Insight:

This is a natural move for Etsy, which earlier this year established a wholesaler program for sellers to make it easier for them to market their goods to retailers. Providing a dongle and a payment-and-inventory system helps sellers who are already making sales offline, and could also encourage others to branch out from their place on Etsy’s quirky online marketplace.