PayPal Brings Its Instant Checkout Service “One Touch” To The Web

PayPal today is making a change to its online payment service on the web, which will now allow customers to checkout from a merchant’s website without having to enter in their user ID and password to complete a transaction, after their initial login. The system, called One Touch for Web, is an expansion of PayPal’s earlier efforts on mobile.

Last fall, the company announced the general availability of One Touch mobile payments at TechCrunch Disrupt, which then introduced an easier way for consumers to shop and pay on mobile devices. On mobile, the platform was built using technology from PayPal acquisition Braintree, and was initially found in a number of applications including those from Jane.com, ParkWhiz, StubHub and Threadless, for example. Today, others such as Aribnb, Lyft, Munchery, Boxed and YPlan are also using the system.

The idea was that with One Touch, customers wouldn’t have to continually enter in their username and password each time they wanted to pay using PayPal – that information would be stored and shared between supported apps.

One Touch made sense as a mobile-first product, because entering in information on smartphone’s small screens is even more tedious than than it is on the desktop web. In fact, Braintree head Bill Ready once noted that more than half of e-commerce shopping experiences take place on mobile devices, but only 10 to 15 percent of purchases were occurring on mobile. The drop off had a lot to do with how complicated it still is to checkout on mobile.

One Touch has been helping to address that problem, according to some of PayPal’s customers. YPlan reported a double digit increase in conversions following its implementation, and StubHub saw an increase in sales, average order values and customer loyalty.

But while mobile was certainly a pain point to immediately address, One Touch has its advantages when extended to the web as well. PayPal’s online checkout has not always been the most seamless experience for online shoppers, as users would be directed away from the online merchant and then sometimes get stuck trying to remember their user ID and password. When they failed to do enter it correctly, they would often just abandon their cart and walk away from the sale entirely.

With One Touch for Web, online shoppers will only have to enter their username and password the first time, and afterwards, they’ll be able to pay on other merchant sites without having to re-authenticate with PayPal.

The system will be automatically enabled for most of PayPal’s current merchants across millions of websites, so it won’t be as dependent on merchant adoption as the native implementations. In total, 165 million PayPal customers will soon be able take advantage of the new feature, the company says.

OneTouch for Web is arriving today in the U.S. but will expand internationally in the months ahead.

Featured Image: Paul Sakuma/AP

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