Visa Inc. recently announced the launch of Visa Checkout, a new payment service designed to streamline the online buying experience. The service was announced on the heels of a blog authored by Jonathan Vaux, Visa’s director of new payment propositions, calling for development of new standards, processes and capabilities aimed at enabling next generation commerce.
Focused on bringing convenience to online and mobile commerce, the new service is targeting some unfortunate shopping statistics. According to eMarketer research cited by Visa, 68 percent of online shoppers are abandoning their products in online shopping carts while 86 percent of shoppers using mobile devices are failing to complete their purchases.
Charlie Scharf, chief executive officer, Visa Inc. comments, “As people around the world spend more time and money online, particularly using mobile devices, they are demanding a fast, secure and frictionless way to shop using the payment cards they already know and trust. Through insights provided by our cardholders, financial institutions and merchant partners, we designed an online payment experience that continues to deliver on this promise, bringing us closer to the simplicity and speed of the ‘swipe’ in the online world.”
Visa Checkout offers online shoppers the assurance of having their financial information staying with their financial service provider while providing the convenience of card-on-file payments. Customers sign up for an account, connecting a credit or debit card to Visa Checkout, and then no longer need to perform the arduous task of reentering account information.
This focus on the end user experience is especially welcome in mCommerce, where inconvenient interfacing options especially hinder the process of online credit card payment.
Visa is also careful to distance itself from the emerging mobile wallet trend.
“People aren’t looking for another wallet – they just want a simpler way to pay online, particularly on mobile devices, and that’s exactly what we designed Visa Checkout to do,” says Sam Shrauger, senior vice president, digital solutions, Visa Inc. “And for merchants and financial institutions, we’ve made Visa Checkout easy to implement and added advanced security features to help reduce the risk of fraud – all with the strength of the Visa brand behind it.”
Currently, Visa Checkout is a password based system. A software development kit was released in conjunction with the service. The aim is to allow developers the ability to integrate Visa Checkout into in-app purchase points.
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