Have you ever been in a situation where you found an item you wanted to purchase on the Internet but felt too lazy to go and fetch your bank card to actually buy it?
Those of us who are familiar with such occurrences will agree that in order for online retail to continue growing, these blocks stopping potential transactions from being completed will need to be eliminated.
This month PayPal have announced how they want to help remove this obstacle through their new product - PayPal Access. It will allow consumers to use their PayPal accounts to automatically log into any website which takes part in the program in order to skip having to fill in full payment details at the end of each transaction. This is similar to what Facebook and Twitter already offer, where users of those networks can use their existing login details on external websites.
Obviously this idea has its own limitations. For example not all online shops currently accept PayPal and not everyone will want an account with this payment provider.
Retailers will also not appreciate the comments made by EBay Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek where he said that customers will no longer need to provide their details to merchants. Surely the owners of e-commerce websites will want to be able to see as many details of who buys from them as possible in order to help them improve their businesses. By removing the link between the shopper and the seller PayPal could be changing one of the fundamental aspects of retail.
What is crucial though is the fact that consumers do want to make an increasing number of transactions online and this platform is currently some way from being as streamlined as it could be when it comes to processing payments.
The problem of too many steps having to be made before a transaction can be completed is especially challenging when making online payments on a small screen - (mainly mobile phones). Here customers face not only having to reach for their cards but also to navigate through a payment process simply not designed for such gadgets. It can also take a while to enter all the information required, which can be inconvenient when we're out and about.
PayPal should be congratulated for going ahead with their idea as it should hopefully spark a whole series of improvements in this area. The questions it has already raised may not have emerged otherwise. Now we just need to wait and see how customers take to Access and where the main sticking points will lay in order for the next product to get closer to being an ideal solution.
Security seems to be one of the obvious issues. As is often the case, when you make payments easier for legitimate consumers then they can also become much easier for fraudsters to carry out. If we only need one login to access our funds and shop, then criminals will only need to gain access to one set of data to be able to steal from us. This may be a very simplistic approach, but not an unreasonable one right now.
Being able to complete purchases with just a couple of clicks is definitely something many people would love to be able to do and looks to be the future for online retail. What is clear though is that the first attempt to achieve this seems to have fallen somewhat short of what is required.
PayPal deserve all the credit for making the bold decision to try and make the first move in this field and let's hope that this sparks a flurry of even better solutions.