One-click payments at PayLane – case study of Nexto
The one-click payments method is becoming more and more popular among PayLane’s clients. We allow e-businesses to offer this payment model to their customers. It makes the whole process of online shopping and payments a lot easier, faster and more convenient.
How it works
Authorization
The idea of one-click payments is to make online shopping as fast as possible. The whole payment process gets squeezed into a one click action. How is it possible?
During the first sale or card authorization (for example, when creating an account in an online shop or e-service provider) a customer enters a credit card number and other data (such as the card type, first and last name of the cardholder, CVV2/CVC2, expiration date).
Data are stored in the PayLane system, so e-business owners don’t need to worry about the security of collected data.
When a customer enters card information, the card is authorized with an acquiring bank by the agency of issuer. This card is saved in PayLane’s and issuer’s systems and the acquiring bank blocks 1 monetary unit (€1, $1 etc.) for a couple of days in order to authorize the card.
At the same time, PayLane returns a card ID to the online shop’s system – this ID is used for future payments with this card. The system can also save first 4 and last 4 numbers of the credit card number (which is in accordance with the PCI DSS). This is useful when customers use more than one credit card for online shopping. So a shop’s system can remember more credit cards per one account.
Next Sales
When a customer does some shopping in the future and wants to pay, they can see first 4 and last 4 digits of the credit card (or cards) number used before. The only thing left to do is to choose a card and click ok. The shop’s system sends PayLane the ID of the first payment or authorization. And that’s all – payment with one click.
Case study of Nexto (online kiosk)
Nexto – an online kiosk – is one of the merchants that uses one-click payments. I asked Piotr Golebiowski (Project Manager at Nexto) why they decided to use one-click payments and what advantages of this solution they see.
Ula Lachowicz: What made you to implement one-click payment in the Nexto online kiosk?
Piotr Golebiowski: We wanted to make the decision process faster for clients. Not willing to force them to go through the whole complicated purchase process, we prepared a solution that makes shopping much easier. Registered customers, who return to our online shop, are the most valuable ones and we wanted to make it easier for them to buy goods. If they have any interest in a specific product, all they have to do is a single click and presto! – the payment is done. This means that they have access to the purchased goods after only a few seconds.
UL: Where did the idea of using one-click payments in your online-shop come from? Who inspired you?
PG: It’s not a secret that Amazon was our inspiration – it’s a great example to follow for many e-businesses. Also Apple Store went this way and offered the possibility of fast purchase. We followed such solutions and investigated how it is done. It’s quite enough to look at the statistics and you’ll see clearly who is the online sales leader. It’s easy to conclude that easy and fast payments mean less hustle for customers and drive online shops’ sales.
UL: When you were integrating one-click payments with Nexto sales system, did you think about future business development plans, e.g. launching your service on foreign markets?
PG: At the time, we focus on Polish market. There is a barrier –a credit card is required, but more and more Internet users have at least one and are not afraid to use them for online shopping.
UL: Debit cards can also be used to pay with one-click. So the number of potential customers increases.
PG: Yes, and virtual cards can be used too.
UL: So you treat one-click payments as a distinguishing mark?
PG: At this moment: yes. We have some other plans bound up with using fast purchase service. But we don’t want to reveal the secret now ;)
UL: How did your customers react to the one-click payments launch? What feedback did you get?
PG: This service is new for us, so we treat it as a kind of pilot program.
But we’ve already received really positive feedback. Especially from customers who live abroad and already know this kind of payment method from Western services. They’re very satisfied with the fact that all they need to do is to enter card data during the first purchase and every next one will be faster.
UL: So, as you say, they are already first foreign customers shopping on Nexto?
PG: Yes, they are mostly Poles living abroad. We’re happy we can provide and deliver our products to customers from UK and U.S.
UL: I realize that one-click payments are available on Nexto for a short time, but as for now, are they popular among customers?
PG: Customers, who already paid online with cards, use our one-click payments. Others test the new method, check how one-click payments work. We didn’t promote the service very much yet. We want to implement some changes and usability improvements first.
UL: Having the experience, do you consider implementing one click-payment in an online shop complicated?
PG: Implementing the payment method, meaning all the programming work, was actually relatively easy. PayLane provides a smooth API that allows our servers to communicate with them. So this was a simple process, everything was clearly described. However, we had more work preparing the service’s frontend, meaning everything that makes the process easy and intuitive for customers. This was the most difficult part.
UL: Did you invent whole process from the beginning or were you inspired by any existing solutions?
PG: We checked and investigated other services, but tried to find and fit a solution to our shop. So it wasn’t an exact copy of any mechanism used somewhere else, but inserting a “purchasing short-cut” to our path of purchase.
Shopping is one thing here – just one click. But before a customer completes a purchase, he has to enter card data during the first transaction. And he has to be sure that his sensitive data are secure. On the other hand it has to be simple process, not to disturb the purchase in any way. Usually a signed user sees an interesting offer and clicks the ‘one-click’ button. At this moment he has to activate the service and enter card data. Then we send him back to the page with the chosen offer. It’s important for us that this stage matches the whole purchase path. We really want to avoid sending clients to external forms with no information about the next steps. We gather all information on our website and transfer them with a safe manner to the PayLane system. And this is the very crucial moment when we have to make sure that the customers feel perfectly secure. We don’t save card data in our online shop, but transfer it to the PayLane system and get back a unique token that identifies the card in the banking system. We use only this token for the next transactions. We don’t know the all customers’ card data – only the token and a few numbers which a customer sees when he logs in to his Nexto account.
UL: It is also useful when customer uses more than one card. Thanks to this, he can easily identify the card that he wants to use for the next payment.
PG: Of course. What’s more, it’s also useful when making complains and solving any doubts that come up after the purchase.
UL: Would you recommend one-click payments to other e-businesses? If yes, which lines of business would find it most useful?
PG: I’ll answer perversely – we wouldn’t recommend it [laugh], as we’d like to stay unique with this service as long as possible. :) Of course this must be understood as we recommend one-click payments, because it’s useful both for online shops and online users.
When it comes to the industry – I think it is an especially good method for companies that offer products or services available right after purchasing. So all kind of electronic services, accesses to web applications or paid online services. I’d compare one-click payments to SMS payments, where customers get quick access to the purchased service. But SMS payments have their limitations, such as constant value of SMS imposed by the operator/telecom and high commissions. Whereas with card payments there are no such barriers. When a customer trusts an online shop and is not afraid to enter the card number, the improvement of the purchase process is really huge.
UL: So one-click payments should be more popular with online shops offering services that don’t require shipping.
PG: When a customer is waiting for a product that was sent via post or courier, one-click payments is an improvement mostly for shop. Of course it also reduces the whole purchase path, so the product could be order faster, but the customer still needs to wait for the delivery. Whereas in the case of services available right after the purchase, using one-click payments are more appropriate for the benefit of both parties. This includes especially shops that offer a wide range of services and their returning customers. One-click payments are really a great solution for them.
