Etsy announced today that it has surpassed 20 million members (buyers and sellers). In the first week of November, the company passed the $700 million mark for sales so far in 2012 (compared to $525 million for all of 2011). By the end of the year, Etsy says, over 100 million items will have been sold in the entire history of Etsy. It has already surpassed $100 million in payments through its direct checkout feature, which enables merchants to accept credit cards and Etsy gift cards.

“Etsy is poised to have its most successful holiday season this year, catching up to and quickly surpassing last season’s record-breaking holiday,” a spokesperson for Etsy tells WebProNews.

Etsy will soon launch its first-ever multi-million dollar online advertising campaign, and is debuting a pop-up shop in New York’s SoHo neighborhood from November 29-December 8.

The company also announced some new features for direct checkout, including: pre-shipping deposits and 3-day hold reduction, expedited bank deposits and reduction in one-time hold when you add a bank account.

“Just five months after opening direct checkout to all US sellers, we pushed out the most requested improvement to direct checkout functionality,” the company says in a blog post. “Sellers whose first sale date is more than 90 days ago, through any payment method, now have funds available for deposit the next business day after the sale, even before the item ships. If your first sale date is less than 90 days ago, or you haven’t yet made that first sale, you must mark the order as shipped, or wait 3 days for the money to become available, whichever is longer. Once you pass the 90-day mark, you will automatically become eligible for 1-day funds availability.”

“When you initiate a deposit to your bank account, whether its automatically on Monday, or requested from your Shop Payment Account, we send the deposit to your bank that day,” the company adds. “It previously took anywhere from 2-5 days for the money to clear into your account, depending on your bank. We’ve been able to work with our bank to get this money to you sooner. Now, sellers will start seeing their money clear into their bank accounts in 1-2 days! It will still depend on your bank’s typical processing time, but most of you will see a big improvement. We’ve heard that these deposits are hitting accounts even more quickly than deposits received through PayPal.”

Buyers are 15-20% more likely to complete the checkout process when a shop has direct checkout enabled, the company says.

In September, Etsy had about1.5 billion pageviews.