Platforms for One-Click Checkout: Which One is Right For You?

February 23, 2023
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In the world of eCommerce, both you and your customers want a smooth checkout process. If you don't do it right, you could lose business. Customers have a lot of expectations for how they will check out online. Customers may abandon their carts if there are any problems along the way, like too many fields to fill out or problems with how things work. 72% of online shoppers will abandon their shopping carts if the process is too hard. The top three reasons why people abandon their shopping carts all have to do with making things too hard:

Requiring account creation
A complex form or process
Unexpected costs

The solution is to make it possible for your customers to pay with just one click. Why? Customers want a smooth shopping experience, and if you can't give them that, they'll go somewhere else. Don't give them any reason to look for you. In this post, we'll talk about one-click checkout providers and compare them. We'll also go into more detail about how using this solution can change your business and get you great feedback from customers. Not every one-click service is the same, and not every one-click service is really just one click. Here is a comparison of the four best providers of one-click checkout.

Why is One-Click Checkout Important?

Here are a few problems with the old way of doing things:

HIGH CART ABANDONMENT

Imagine this: Your customer finds something they like. They click "Add to Cart" with excitement. Then the icon for the shopping cart. Then they hit the "Checkout" button. Now they need to set up a profile and make another password so they can sign in before making that purchase. Next, you'll need to pull out your credit or debit card and enter its information. They check that the expiration date and the security code are correct. Then they hit the "Confirm" button. All done! Well... not quite. Most people don't bother to go through a long checkout process. What if their credit card is in another room, or if they only have a few minutes to make this purchase on a busy day? Fewer people are likely to buy from you if you make things hard for them. The better, easier you can make the checkout process, the better. It's faster, yes, but it's also easier, which makes it less likely that people will leave their carts along the way.

TRUST

Many sellers don't want to use a new payment service because they don't understand it. They are worried that adding a new payment button could mess up the way their website works. They also worry about keeping private information about their clients safe. Online shoppers trust retail giants like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy to keep them safe from online fraud because these sites already have social proof built-in. But independent eCommerce outlets? Not really. Customers only trust independent stores to do the same thing about 5% of the time. One solution is for online stores to use trusted third-party one-click payment providers (more on this in a bit).

PAYMENT SERVICE FEES

Merchant fees can vary based on which provider you choose. Last year, digital transactions were worth about $4.8 trillion, with eCommerce making up about $3.5 billion of that total. Checkout platforms usually charge 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction, but platforms like Fast charge 2.9% and $0.29. But on top of transaction fees, some checkout platforms could charge merchants just to use them. PayPal is fast, and sellers only have to pay transaction fees. Bolt and Shopify sellers, on the other hand, have to pay a platform fee on top of the fees for each sale. Bolt charges platform fees to sellers based on a percentage of their annual sales. A "risk coverage" fee is also charged to sellers by Bolt. It's understandable to worry about transaction fees, but merchants pay an even higher price when they don't have an easy way to check out. In other words, it's worth it to get a payment provider with one-click checkout. It all comes down to which service gives you the most features for the least amount of money.

One-Click Checkout: How Fast Online Payments Work

It wasn't always like this when you clicked on something. In fact, Amazon once owned the patent for payments with "One Click." But that patent ran out in 2017, and online shopping has never been the same since.

“Once they opened up and became a platform and a marketplace instead of being a reseller of books, it became important for people doing business at either end of Amazon to know that they had this large database that they would be able to give access to a large number of customers literally with one click.” –Thomas Jeitschko, Professor of Economics at Michigan State University

Several companies are now trying to be the one-click checkout service.

ONE-CLICK VS. EXPRESS CHECKOUT

Keep in mind that this kind of checkout experience goes by a few different names. The difference is as follows:

One-Click: When you hear the phrase "one-click," that was once a sign of Amazon. But in the language of the business world, "one-click" can mean any simple shopping cart.
Express: This often refers to services that make it easy to pay with one click and a payment provider that customers already know and trust. Even though "Express" doesn't say "one click," it still promises the same thing: a quick checkout.

The Case for One-Click Checkout

Let's say you already have a good system. Why should you start comparing one-click checkout options to find the best one for you? Just a few of those reasons are:

Increasing Conversions: Customers like to pay quickly. ElasticPath did an A/B test where customers were sent to either a multi-step payment page or a one-click payment page. The one-click payment page got 21% more conversions.
Capturing Mobile Transactions: Since 79% of smartphone users have bought something in the last six months, this is more important than ever. Are you going to get that crowd's attention? Or will you just assume that any checkout you use is fine?
Affordability: Are the fees you pay less than what your competitors pay? This can be hard to figure out. Some vendors charge a percentage plus a flat fee per transaction, while others charge flat fees per transaction that work better for high-priced items.

Next, let's take a look at some of the software choices.

What is Bolt One Click?

Bolt is a company that offers fast checkout. Its goal is to give different eCommerce providers the same benefits of a smooth checkout as Amazon. Buyers can finish their orders in two steps with Bolt.

Bolt charges sellers an annual fee to use its checkout service. The price is based on the seller's annual sales. Bolt only works with online stores that do more than $3 million in credit card sales every year.

What is Fast Checkout?

Fast lets you check out with just one click and works on all devices, platforms, and browsers. It takes care of logging in, checking out, tracking orders, and a lot more. Fast also has batch orders, which saves sellers money on processing fees and shipping costs by combining multiple transactions into one sale. Other platforms require at least two steps to finish an order, but clicking "Fast Checkout" on Fast is all it takes to finish an order.

With Fast, sellers can import a simple API (Application Programming Interface) to make payments easy without making major changes to their store's website. Fast also does well when it comes to trust because it has a high standard for its privacy policy and gives you free, 100% chargeback fraud protection for free.

WHAT IS PAYPAL ONE TOUCH?

One Touch for PayPal is different because it focuses more on the customer than on the store. It makes it easier for customers to log in, shop, and check out than the regular PayPal interface.

A buyer who uses PayPal's One Touch feature should already be signed in by the time they make a purchase. When they click the "Checkout with PayPal" button, a new page will open asking them to confirm the purchase. If a buyer is not already signed in, the checkout process will take more steps.

WHAT IS SHOP PAY?

Shop Pay is a way to check out with the Shop app, which is a platform for shopping at stores that are only available through Shopify. What makes it different from something like Fast or Bolt? Since it's only an option for Shopify stores, there won't be any more platforms that do the same thing. This is a way to check out for people who are already using Shopify or are getting ready to set up on Shopify.

Shop Pay isn't very useful because it only works on certain platforms. But because Shopify is a closed ecosystem, it's one of the only choices sellers on the platform have.

How Do I Install One-Click Checkout?

This is a question that many sellers have, and it keeps them from installing their sites. One-click shopping may be easy for the customer, but it can be hard for the store. But that's not necessary. Just do these important things:

1. CHECK WITH THE PLATFORM HOSTING YOUR SITE

Make sure your platform works with the one-click provider before you sign up for anything. Here are some of the most common platforms that third-party vendors can work with:

WooCommerce
BigCommerce
Magento
Shopify
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Wix
Squarespace

2. SELECT YOUR PROVIDER

We've done the direct side-by-side comparisons for you in the table at the top of this post. But if you want to know more about which provider is best for you, think about the following:

Checkout Speed: Does the platform need a lot of work to be done by third parties, which will slow things down?
The number of Actual Clicks to Complete Orders: "One-click" doesn't always mean "one click." Fast is the only company with a button that lets you pay for your order with just one click. Make sure you know how each platform's quick checkout works so you can see if your carts need more than one click.
Shipment Tracking: This is especially important for people who usually buy from big companies. They are used to shipping in the open.
Payout Options: Does it pay out right away? Do you have to wait until Monday to get something that you bought on Friday? Make sure to read about how long it takes to get paid before you sign up.
Fraud Protection: Does your payment provider offer protection against chargeback fraud to help you limit the amount you lose to thieves? And do they give it to you for free?

3. FOLLOW THE DOCUMENTATION

Assuming you've matched your platform to your payment provider, you're ready to move on with the instructions. In some cases, all you have to do is add an app. In other cases, you might need to look at their documentation again to see how to install it on different platforms. Don't worry if it sounds hard; most of it is stuff you've already done. For example, getting started with a new payment processor can be as easy as signing up for an account and copying and pasting code into your platform. White-glove implementation is available on other platforms.

How Important it is, to Be Honest, and Earn Customer Trust?

Using a third-party checkout provider is helpful because it can build trust right away. Since there are a lot of online checkout providers, anyone can use them. This makes the process more democratic. As long as you have a good eCommerce platform, it's easy to add any of the providers listed here and accept one-click checkouts. One reason why this is so important is that it means you can now compete with the "Amazon Experience."

COMPETING WITH THE “AMAZON EXPERIENCE”

Let's boil it all down to one number: almost 90% of buyers agree that they're more likely to buy on Amazon than on other eCommerce sites.

How does that make you feel? First, you'll have to make an experience like Amazon in a way that can compete with what Amazon already does.

For Fast, this means combining quick buyer verification and payment processing into a single step.
For Shopify, this means making Shop Pay even better.

One-click is no longer just for the order page of an online store; you can expect to see it everywhere. But none of this can happen if we don't trust each other. If buyers don't trust a seller, they can lose up to 75% of their sales. This is why it's so important for merchants to choose from the best one-click checkout providers. Use an existing platform to make your shop work well with it.

“Sellers can lose as many as 75% of their sales if they struggle with a lack of trust, that’s why it’s so critical for merchants to pick from the top names in one-click checkout providers.”

If you do it right, your API requirements and development costs will be low. And the good things? More confidence in your one-click purchases will help you compete with the big retail stores.

Making One-Click Checkout Easy

How do you make it easy for yourself to use one-click? If you know more, you'll do better. You should know who the best service providers are and how to use them on your own eCommerce store. Remember what to look for in companies that offer one-click checkout:

Compatibility with the platforms you already have
Convenience for customers
Order processing reliability on the back end
Chargeback fraud protection
Payout options: Compare the options before you sign up, whether you need to be paid right away or don't mind waiting a business day.

Next, you need to choose a one-click checkout provider that will make things easier for your customers.

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Platforms for One-Click Checkout: Which One is Right For You?