PayPal Adds Checkout Options including Apple Pay and Saved-Settings

PayPal announced new features for sellers who use its services that are designed to enhance payment acceptance on their online stores. A spokesperson told EcommerceBytes, “With one integration, small businesses will get access to these new features, as well as existing complete payments solution features, which include the ability to accept PayPal, Venmo and PayPal Pay Later products, process card payments directly on their website, and customize the checkout experience.”

She described the four features in a nutshell as follows:

1) The ability for small businesses to accept payments with Apple Pay, as well as a range of other payment options

2) The ability for customers to save their payment methods with the PayPal vault, which can reduce friction and drive conversion

3) The ability to keep cards up to date with real-time account updater, which can help reduce declines and drive conversions by automatically updating lost, stolen or expired cards-on-file

4) The ability for small businesses to access interchange plus plus (IC++) pricing with gross settlement and get more transparent pricing

The fact PayPal’s payments solution allows consumers to securely save their payment information on a business’s ecommerce website for future purchases is significant. According to Tuesday’s announcement:

“By letting PayPal help manage some of the business’s PCI compliance for the storage of financial instruments, businesses are better able to manage risk and complexity of their businesses. Small businesses can save multiple payment methods — including PayPal, Venmo and cards — in the PayPal vault. Once saved, these payment methods will remain fresh via PayPal’s real-time account updater service and network tokens, which can help reduce declines and drive conversions by automatically updating lost, stolen or expired cards-on-file.”

The announcement also referred to an optional pricing model for merchants: “Businesses will now be able to choose between flat-rate pricing or an IC++ pricing model, which helps them get paid the full amount up-front and get a transparent view into processing costs.”

According to TechCrunch, IC++ could be a good alternative for medium-sized businesses making multiple millions a year. “The IC++ structure consists of interchange fees (charged by the issuer bank), card network fees (charged by a network like Visa and Mastercard) and markup fees collected by PayPal,” it explained. “With this method, merchants can see if they can incentivize customers into using cards by a specific bank or a specific network.”

Sellers can learn more about the new features on the PayPal website.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.