45% of US Online Merchants Want One-Click Checkout Solutions

One-click checkout solutions top the wish list of U.S. online merchants when it comes to checkout and payment technologies.

Forty-five percent of these merchants have asked their payment service providers (PSPs) to provide this technology, viewing it as a way to increase conversion rates, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard collaboration, “The Role of PSPs in the Checkout Experience: U.S. Edition.”

One-click checkout solutions outpace the second-most requested checkout and payment technology, secure card on file, which 27% of U.S. online merchants have asked their PSPs to implement, according to the report.

One-Click Checkout Boosts Conversion

The report found that merchants believe one-click checkout solutions will boost conversion by speeding up checkout and improving the customer experience.

By doing so, this technology helps satisfy the most common reason U.S. online merchants request new checkout and payment technologies from their PSPs: a desire to increase conversion rates.

Nearly three-quarters of these merchants said their desire for higher conversions is a reason they have requested technology from their PSPs, with about 44% saying it’s the most important factor and another 28% saying it’s a factor in their request, per the report.

With about 72% of merchants looking for technology that makes for higher conversions, that factor is about 18 percentage points ahead of the second-most cited factor: ease of integration with current systems.

With their existing technology, nearly 7 in 10 U.S. eCommerce merchants struggle with user experience during checkout, with their two most common pain points being abandoned carts and long checkout times, the report found.

Addressing these issues with features like one-click checkout and secure cards on file can increase conversion.

Moving Consumers From Intent to Action

Getting the checkout experience right can mean the difference between a consumer intending to purchase and completing the transaction, Jennifer Marriner, executive vice president of global acceptance solutions at Mastercard, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in November.

“Around 27% of carts are abandoned because the process is too complex and slow,” Marriner said.

Among the tools Mastercard offers to make checkout faster and more secure is Click to Pay, which allows consumers to skip the manual entry of card information, thereby speeding up checkout, lowering the likelihood of abandoned transactions and increasing conversion rates.

Click to Pay reduces checkout times by 50%, Marriner told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an interview posted in February.

“It’s a much smoother checkout payment experience and it doesn’t interfere with shopping or the service. … Payments just happen naturally at the end of the checkout flow,” Marriner said.

Lengthy Checkout Leads to Lost Sales

Another company offering a one-click checkout tool, PayPal, said in August that this technology offers a solution for a common reason merchants lose sales: a lengthy checkout experience.

PayPal’s one-click checkout tool, Fastlane, helps merchants recognize consumers early in the guest checkout process — by using their email — and then complete the purchase in as little as one click.

“Merchants often lose sales due to lengthy checkout experiences,” PayPal said in an August press release. “Despite the time-consuming process, guest checkout remains a preferred checkout method for many consumers.”

Checkout technology Bolt has also highlighted the contribution one-click checkout can make to conversion performance.

When the company became Checkout.com’s “exclusive one-click checkout provider” in March, Maju Kuruvilla, who was CEO of Bolt at the time, said in a press release, “We are helping merchants deliver a better shopper experience and higher conversion.”