AN ONLINE marketplace set up to take on the likes of Amazon has seen transactions rise by more than 600 per cent.

OnBuy.com was established in 2016 by Cas Paton, who said he was frustrated by the commission charged by other online marketplaces.

Year-to-date transactions are up 608 per cent on 2017. During one week in October, visits to its site were up 1,178 per cent on the same period last year, based on comparable users, the company said.

Last month, OnBuy.com announced a partnership with PayPal, which Mr Paton had said had already fuelled “exponential” growth. More than eight million products are currently listed by the site.

The company has doubled its staff and now employs around 26 people at its Poole base.

Mr Paton said: “It’s been a year of massive growth and development for OnBuy.com. We’ve invested millions into the marketplace and have huge plans for the future including branching out to the rest of Europe next year. To support this, we’re rapidly expanding our team to support our aim of having 12million products listed online by the end of the year.

“Our partnership with PayPal as well as HotUKdeals, has not only improved the transaction process for our sellers, but it’s aided the exponential growth we’ve seen in the last month.

“We are the first UK product marketplace to be able to offer PayPal directly supported between PayPal and the seller since eBay, which we have no doubt will help us continue to grow and hit next year’s targets, and more.”

OnBuy.com has introduced a sales guarantee for its standard seller account holders, giving them the opportunity to have the following month’s subscription fees waived if they make less than £500 in sales in a month. It says it is the first marketplace to offer such a guarantee in the UK.

Mr Paton said by taking less commission from sellers than the likes of Amazon Marketplace, the business had enabled sellers to offer better prices to customers.

The business is soon to be featured on the Department for International Trade website, he said. “This achievement is the result of our overseas sales, overall growth and our plans to branch out to the rest of Europe in 2019,” he said.

Amazon itself consistently lost money in its early years. Mr Paton said: “No business that’s investing and re-investing in its own growth will always be profitable. We’re certainly not scared of investing in our growth.”