SEKUR Me’s Universal Buy Button Includes Apple Pay

With the flurry of merchants jumping aboard the Apple Pay bandwagon, SEKUR Me joined the movement yesterday (May 19) as it unveiled its Universal Buy Button, a product that provides one-click mobile Web payments, including Apple Pay. The recent product builds on the company’s mobile payment app, which it rolled out in February.

“SEKUR Me is the only company that implements a Universal Buy Button,” stated company founder and CEO Jack Bicer in a company press release. “We do not process payments, we remove the payment friction. SEKUR.me can work with payment methods like Apple Pay or directly with any payment gateway; with PayPal and Google Wallet support in the works. Our goal is to become the single button you see on your shopping cart where consumers can pay with one click using their preferred payment choice, whether they have an Android or an IOS device.”

With the Universal Buy Button, purchasing with one’s fingerprint is democratized to all smartphones – in just five seconds. This is thanks to the fact that the button allows a customer to skip checkout forms for purchasing items on eCommerce and mCommerce sites.

As MPD CEO Karen Webster points out, according to comScore, 29 percent of all search activity is now done on mobile devices. And SEKUR Me is not alone in targeting mobile consumers, as several big players are currently battling in the space, too.

SEKUR Me’s release cites the gap between online traffic and purchases made on smartphones. The latter, the release states, comes out to 9.1 percent, while 31.2 percent of online traffic in the U.S. is generated via smartphones. According to SEKUR Me’s release, $18 billion in online mobile sales could have taken place if this gap was closed. And that’s where it hopes its Universal Buy Button will fill in the gaps.

That being said, according to TimeTrade’s “State of Retail” report, mobile purchasing may not be the growth area some industry watchers expect, as only 13 percent of consumers surveyed by TimeTrade had made purchases using mobile devices.

“The bottom line is customers value the personal experience of the physical store,” said Gary Ambrosino, TimeTrade’s CEO, in a statement released alongside the study. “We found that shoppers have done their shopping or discovery online, then go into the store to get help with their final purchase decision.”

In this context, SEKUR Me’s Universal Buy Button will not revolutionize eCommerce shopping experience on its own. TimeTrade recommends for it to be integrated into cross-channel strategy.

“We see retail convergence – the coming together of digital and physical retailing – as a game changing trend,” said Ambrosino. “Traditional e-tailers are opening brick-and-mortar locations because they understand very well the highly personal service they can offer in a store and traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are creating more personal, digital-savvy experiences in the store to better serve today’s shopper.”