AmEx Joins Battle at Online Checkout With An ‘UnWallet’ Built for Its Cards

By John Stewart

With Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. making headway with online merchants with their streamlined checkout services, it was only a matter of time before network rivals introduced their own versions. American Express Co. did just that Thursday, announcing what it is calling an “unwallet” to allow its cardholders to make purchases online with a few clicks.

Formally called Amex Express Checkout, the new service is available now at eight merchant sites, including Barkbox, Burberry, Newegg, and Ticketmaster, according to a company press release. More sites are expected to integrate the service “in the coming months,” according to AmEx, including Avis Car Rental, Banana Republic, Gap, and 1-800-Flowers.com.

AmEx says it is also working with online processor Stripe to integrate the service with merchants that use Stripe for payment acceptance. It was not immediately known how many merchants Stripe serves.

The new service functions on desktops, the mobile Web, or on native apps, AmEx says. More than 20 million of its cardholders are eligible to use the service.

Amex Express Checkout works by letting cardholders use the password and user ID they have set up for use on the AmEx site or app to initiate payment at checkout on merchant sites. Once AmEx verifies the user’s identity, the service autofills the checkout form, which typically asks for card credentials and billing and shipping addresses. AmEx also tokenizes card credentials before sending the data to merchant systems.

“Because American Express autofills account information in real-time for every online transaction via Amex Express Checkout, both card members and merchants are assured that the card number and billing details provided are current—eliminating the need to manually update those details, as may be required with an online wallet,” AmEx says in its release.

With the new service, AmEx follows in the footsteps of other companies that have worked to simplify and streamline online checkout, a tedious and sometimes labyrinthine process widely seen as a main cause of cart abandonment.  AmEx says a test merchant using Amex Express Checkout saw a conversion rate 20% higher for the service compared to manual checkouts.

Visa claims 125,000 merchants and 4.5 million users for its 11-month-old Visa Checkout service, while MasterCard says its 2-year-old MasterPass service serves 125,000 merchants. MasterCard will not disclose how many consumers have signed on.

Unlike the new AmEx service, however, the two rival services are digital wallets that require a separate log-in. At the same time, they allow users to tap any card brand they have stored in the wallets.

“We know our card members and merchants want a simple, fast checkout process to make online shopping easy and delightful,” said Leslie Berland, executive vice president for digital partnerships and development at AmEx, in the release. “Amex Express Checkout leverages our unique technology to create a checkout experience unlike any other, one that is valuable to merchants and secure for Card Members, giving them peace of mind.”