eCommerce Solutions: Payments in the Digital Realm

We’ve all finally started to understand how awesome payments are. Around 1,500 payment startups on AngelList, which believe they have found the missing piece to the payments puzzle, can substantiate this fact.

While there have been many new introductions to payment technologies in 2014, digital payments has not quite taken over. With that said, according to Hill Ferguson the chief product officer of PayPayl, 85 percent of transactions are still being conducted via cash.

In 2014 we started to see the playing field change for payments. With that notion in mind, many experts believe that 2015 is the year that payments will be pushed more than ever into the digital realm, thanks to innovations in authentication and shopping on social networks.

Easy Integration and Password-less Authentication

According to Mobile Marketer, roughly 1 percent of commerce happens on mobile today. However, many believe this is about to change -- especially since there are more mobile devices floating around the world than people.* The driving force of change will be authentication for mobile shopping and conversions in 2015.

Online shopping is about convenience, but also about security and a seamless shopping experience. With that in mind, there is technology that can power payment experiences that don’t require entering a password or sharing credit card details. We have invisibile payment experiences all the time as shoppers, that are more secure and allow us to carry on with our daily lives a little bit easier than before. However, more companies need to understand this in order to fully develop their eCommerce driven sites.

Security is a huge factor for eCommerce driven sites, as well as online shoppers. Nobody likes giving away their credit card information and it’s not very secure to share that data with sellers. However, that is only part of the puzzle -- authentication is the leading portion.

We all know that remembering passwords is a pain, and reusing them across multiple sites isn’t secure. Leading tech companies Apple and Samsung’s latest smartphones and tablets have fingerprint authentication to ensure secure, one touch mobile payments a seamless reality. It’s easy to predict that by next holiday season shoppers won’t be using password protected sites or typing in credit card information to mobile devices to buy those gifts for loved ones.

Shopping on Social Media Platforms

Going shopping with friends and family has always been a social remedy. Now, we can shop conveniently at any given time, with any of our friends -- through our social media channels.

With so much data about us and our preferences being shared online, it wasn’t long until social media giants took notice in the eCommerce gains. It was only recently that Facebook and Twitter implemented a “buy” button. Apps like Pinterest and Instagram also help share and discover products that we are interested in, creating a strong social context around these products. What’s happened is social networks and apps are creating new opportunities for retailers to connect their customers with products and services in the moment they want to buy them.*

Digital Payments in 2015

We can all recognize that 2014 was the turning point for digital payments. A lot of larger mobile transactions have gotten rid of password protection and the technology exists to make a simpler more secure mobile payment. Many of us today are on social media and as we share more information about ourselves, the growing expectation will be that the products we want will be available to buy immediately.*

As retailers and consumers start integrating the following new mobile and online buying experiences into their daily lives, the more people will make digital payments increasingly available in the offline world.

For more on eCommerce solutions, contact us or see: Mobile Personalization for the Canadian Independent

*Original words in: "The Payments Tipping Point Will Be In 2015." TechCrunch, Hill Ferguson: accessed 5 January 2015.

*Photo credit: Save The Graphics