Online shoppers may find it much more convenient to employ their devices for making digital payments.
Visa has now stepped forward in ensuring that its digital Checkout for payments through electronic and mobile commerce will be more friendly to customers using smartphones and tablets as it will allow purchases to be completed by simply sliding a virtual image of their plastic credit cards across their device screens.
This has been done in the hopes that it will provide better competition with its rivals in this market.
The Visa Checkout digital payments service was first launched in 2014 and is meant to take on PayPal within the e- and mobile commerce space. Retailers offer this option with an embedded button on their apps and sites, making it possible for purchase payments to be made without ever having to navigate away from their current location. The original format of the service meant that users would need to enter a username and password on the screen in order to complete a mobile payment transaction. However, the newest feature has eliminated that step and has further streamlined the entire process.
To complete a mobile commerce checkout, users swipe and image of their card to the right before entering a password.
According to Visa, pilot tests of the m-commerce payments service have shown that the swipe feature makes shoppers twice as likely to complete the checkout process instead of abandoning their carts.
At the first launch of this service, the button will be available only to merchants who are selling digital products and services or that have items that are purchased online so that a customer can pick it up at the nearest store location. That said, Visa has stated that it will be expanding its service within the next few months in order to make it possible for merchants to sell products that will be shipped to their customers.
The senior vice president of digital solutions at Visa, Sam Shrauger, discussed this new mobile commerce feature and said that “This new experience brings digital payments one step closer to the ease, trust and familiarity that consumers have long valued from Visa in the physical world.”
MasterCard is offering a similar service with its MasterPass platform. The MasterPass application is meant to help make e-commerce more convenient to consumers, but MasterCard is not likely to try to form a direct connection with people using the app. Instead, the company is likely to continue focusing its efforts on providing services to its business partners, allowing them to connect with mobile consumers more dynamically. For MasterCard, creating something new is not the priority. The company wants to see its MasterPass service integrated into existing platforms.