Shopgate has bought MagCorp, TechCrunch report. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Shopgate is an m-commerce platform based in Germany and Palo Alto and backed by Creathor Ventures and Northcap while MagCorp is the developer of Magento. TechCrunch reported that the move can be considered an acqui-hire since the four developers of MagCorp will be joining the team at Shopgate in its Butzbach, Germany campus.

Using its platform, Shopgate allows merchants to build a mobile store-front, allowing them to be operational using either a native app or browser-based m-commerce offering. Shopgate said it leads the rest of the competition because it is able to integrate with well-known web-based e-commerce and shopping cart provider APIs, including that of Magento. As a result, Shopgate is a plug-and-play application with majority of the online store backends already used by merchants, the report said.

This is where the current acquisition is important. The developer team of MagCorp comprised of Alexander Wesselburg, André Kraus, Stephan Recknagel and Peter Liebig will be bringing with them the experience they have with Magento as they join the Shopgate team, the report said.

The developers have also worked on Glossybox and the Birchbox clone of Samwer brothers where they were said to be responsible for building the Magento-based e-commerce portion of the website so that it would be able to take care of payments that continuously reoccur as required by the subscription service. The other projects of the MagCorp team include venture-backed clothing retailer Luxodo based in Germany, car dealership firm Autoda and sporting goods retailer mysportgroup, the report said.

Shopgate intends to utilize the expertise of the developer to improve its integration with Magento. Shopgate's COO Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine told TechCrunch that they will particularly enhance the integration they are already offering and will begin to focus on Magento Enterprise. Shopgate added that it is not excluding the possibility of making more acquisitions in their quest for continued growth, the report said.