The payment stage remains a weak point in online shopping, in terms of experience and security. Good news: a new one-click payment method is coming and has the potential to become a standard. As long as everyone plays the game.
Yes, like 8 out of 10 online shoppers (1)you are used to paying online with your bank card, you have necessarily been confronted with the chore of entering your identifiers: the (long) 16-digit number, the validity date, the 3-digit cryptogram, if necessary a one-time use code… Nothing insurmountable, obviously, but a step irritating enough to lead to frequent renunciations: 55% of Shoppers, for example, abandon their cart if they have to re-enter their credit card or shipping information (2).
One-click payment
The subject is as old as electronic commerce. However, no truly satisfactory solution has yet been found.
Let’s be precise: there are solutions to alleviate the chore. You can, for example, authorize the merchant to remember your card number. However, this involves creating customer accounts on each site you buy on, and therefore increasing the risk of theft of sensitive personal data. Suffice it to say: it is not recommended, especially on smaller sites. It is better, as much as possible, buy online in guest modeby refusing to have your personal information stored.
You can also use a digital wallet (Or wallet), such as PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay. They are more secure: no sharing your card number with the merchant, or even your postal address or telephone number if you choose to order online. guest mode, that is to say without creating an account with the merchant. They are also more practical, since they allow the one-click payment. But, unlike the bank card, they are not not systematically accepted by all online merchants. The first of them, Amazon, does not offer, for example, any of the three.
Here’s the good news: a new one-click payment method promises to combine security, experience and universality. Her name? Click to Payin other words click to pay.
The potential of a new standard
So what does Click to Pay have that other one-click payment solutions don’t? In terms of experience, not much: it is very close to that experienced with the wallets already mentioned.
Its main asset is elsewhere: it isa solution developed by the bank card networks themselves. More precisely by EMVco, a company co-owned by the main global acceptance networks and dedicated to the development of new secure technical solutions for the card payments market.
Their objective is clear: to make Click to Pay the standard for online payment by credit card and thus cut the grass to the ambitions of Paypal, Apple and other Googles. But also from Wero, the future European mobile wallet based on instant transfers. The networks are extremely proactive, they want to take control and push this solution, confirms Guillaume Yribarren, payments expert and consulting director at Galitt.
Click to Pay is not exactly new. Developed in 2017, the solution has already been deployed in several countries, including the United States, Canada and Australia. In France, Visa will open the ballwith a progressive deployment [qui] will begin by the end of the year, announces a recent press release.
Click to Pay, how does it work?
To be able to use Click to Pay, you must first go through a enrollment stage. Cardholders will gradually be offered Click to Pay directly via their banks and will be able to manage their profile through their mobile banking applications, Visa announces.
Once registered, you are ready to use Click to Pay on merchant sites displaying this logo.
By clicking on it, and after authentication, you are sent to a secure space, where the cards you have registered appear. Exactly as is done today with PayPal or Apple Pay. All you have to do is choose the one you want to pay with.
At no time do you need to communicate your bank card number, which is sensitive information. Payment is made through a token (token), a sort of encrypted alias of your real number.
Click to Pay, moreover, does not only facilitate payment: the service also transmits your billing and delivery addresses to the merchant.
Traders have their say
The will of card payment networks is powerful, but it is not sufficient. To become a standard, Click to Pay will also have to take the banks on boardwho distribute the cards to individuals, and, of course, e-retailers, who are free to offer their customers the payment methods of their choice.
It is hard to see banks going against the wishes of Visa, Mastercard and others. As they have done in the past with another EMVco standard, contactless payment, they should adopt Click to Pay. This will, however, require implementing the solution into their applications, which could take a little time.
E-retailers, on the other hand, will undoubtedly be a little more difficult to convince. Click to Pay arrives in a busy landscape, where there is no shortage of online payment solutions, notes Guillaume Yribarren. The payment pages of some online retailers are already overflowing with logos. What’s the point of adding another one? In its communication, Visa promises an acceleration of the finalization of purchases by 20 seconds on average and a higher authorization rate of 4% compared to regular card transactions. Will this be enough to convince merchants to bear the Click to Pay integration costs?
A possible failure would not be a first. Before investing in Click to Pay, Visa and Mastercard had developed their own one-click online payment solutions, respectively called Checkout and Masterpass. With the result, a total flop.
(1) Source: Fevad, Key figures for e-commerce 2022. (2) Source: Essential Cart Abandonment Stats, Trends and Facts 2022