Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Improving online conversion rates, especially for mobile commerce, depends on providing many options for faster checkout experiences. That’s the assertion of the newly released “Mobile Commerce Forecast 2015-2018” from Mark Beccue Consulting Inc.
Beccue predicts that global mobile-commerce payment volume will grow from $187.5 billion in 2014 to $744 billion in 2018, based on sales in fast checkout services such as Amazon.com Inc.’s One Click, Visa Checkout, MasterCard Inc.’s MasterPass, and Apple Pay. China, where the Alipay digital wallet dominates, represents about 40% of that volume. Many Chinese consumers have Internet access only via mobile devices, says Mark Beccue, principal of the Tampa, Fla.-based firm.
Online merchants are constantly looking for ways to improve their conversion rate, which measures the percentage of online shoppers that end up making a purchase during their visit. Mobile commerce, where the conversion rates are notoriously less than when consumers shop using desktop computers, intensifies that effort.
In response, payments companies now offer faster checkout services that eliminate the tedious steps of typing in a 16-digit card number and multiple addresses via a smart-phone screen. But “merchants have been relatively slow to adopt these,” Beccue tells Digital Transactions News. “Almost no one is accepting fast checkout online.” That’s because consumers continue to make the vast majority of online transactions on desktop and laptop computers, Beccue notes in his report.
With multiple digital wallets available to consumers, merchants will not be able to accept just one, Beccue says, if they want to maximize their m-commerce sales.
But he says that could, and likely will, change. The trigger will be the larger retailers who first will have fast checkout options for consumers. They may need to offer two to three options to ensure as many consumers as possible have easy ways to pay, he says.
The implications of this for payments companies are manifold. PayPal Inc., with its long online history, is well positioned, Beccue says. PayPal, which becomes a separate company this year following its split from eBay Inc., announced the availability of One Touch, an expedited checkout service for mobile Web sites. One Touch had been available only for apps. “PayPal has thought about building faster checkouts from the beginning and how it would work,” Beccue says. “They seem to have the right game plan and less friction.”
Another advantage is that PayPal, as does Visa Checkout, MasterPass, and Google Inc.’s Google Wallet, accepts most credit and debit cards. With choice, consumers aren’t locked into a specific wallet.
The card networks, too, benefit, he says. Visa and MasterCard are in an enviable position of enabling faster m-commerce transactions and benefiting from the volume, Beccue says. “Visa and MasterCard are the winners.”
