It’s been a few years since online retail giant Amazon started offering hosted e-commerce payment services in the form of Checkout by Amazon, and today the company has rolled out some upgraded features that should be good news for merchants. Third-party sellers now have the ability to provide customers with a full-blown Amazon.com experience from directly within their own site, including address book and payment method information.
Amazon believes these updates to Checkout will help deter the abandonment of shopping carts and boost sales for merchants. Previously, Checkout redirected customers to Amazon.com to process orders originating from independent merchant sites, causing confusion and frustration for customers. Now when a user clicks the “Checkout with Amazon” button on a merchant site, they will be able to enter their payment information and access their address book without leaving that site.
“These enhancements to Checkout by Amazon reflect the feedback we’ve received from merchants who want to offer Amazon.com customers the convenience of using their account information with a more streamlined buying experience,” said Baris Cetinok, general manager of Amazon Payments.
Merchants will be pleased with the deeper site integration now found in Checkout, and customers should be excited that making purchases with their Amazon account on third-party sites its faster and more streamlined. Competitors like PayPal and Google Checkout have allowed customers to buy directly from merchant sites with embeddable tools for over a year. Amazon fans should be glad to see their horse get back in the race and become a more viable option for hosted e-commerce payments.
Amazon has been continually working to improve Checkout, including last year’s introduction of PayPhrase, which sped up payments by allowing users to enter a phrase and a PIN to quickly purchase items. The upgrades to Checkout come at an opportune time for Amazon as retailers prepare for another busy holiday shopping season.
