You want to use a Mobile Wallet?

What is a mobile wallet? And why should you consider incorporating them as payment methods into your eCommerce website?

The world of money has developed quite significantly since the first coins were struck. With the introduction of the credit card to the UK in 1966, debit cards that took the money direct from your account in 1987 and contactless payments in 2007, it’s become easier and easier to part a customer with their hard-earned cash for services and goods. Technology has improved and now it’s possible to get an app that uses an NFC chip in a mobile phone to make payments – just wave your phone near the chip and pin reader in store and voila! You’ve paid for your sausages. Twenty years ago, the idea of using your mobile phone for anything more than phone calls and sms messages was in the realm of science fiction. Today, payment using a mobile wallet is becoming normal practice.

The story doesn’t stop there though. The same payment options also exist online for eCommerce sites. Apple and Google both have their way of doing things and are in direct competition with PayPal and other long-established online payment providers. They’re all fighting for your business with the speed and security of their systems and convenience for your customers. An example of this variety can be seen below. When shopping online for shoes, one of our directors was presented with these options during the checkout process. Not only was he surprised at the range of payment options available, but it formed the catalyst for the creation of this article!

                                                          

Why does this concern Xigen?

Xigen is a digital marketing agency, and the vast majority of our output is in the digital realm, including a number of eCommerce websites. This technology is of great importance to our clients, so naturally we need to know how to implement it and present it in the most appealing and professional manner.

What needs to be considered?

Before launching into the heady world of the mobile wallet, there are a few things that you, the eCommerce website owner, need to consider.

Firstly, do you really need to add a mobile wallet to the payment options already available on your site? That’s a tricky question in it’s own right, but the answer in this day and age is that you should definitely consider it, whether you decide to implement them or not. Mobile transactions, rightly or wrongly, have a bit of a reputation for not being as secure as desktop. Mobile wallets offer additional layers of security to your online payments. Card details aren’t shared and quite often the transactions are biometrically authorised if a mobile device is used. Since Amazon introduced one click payment in 1999, the convenience of being able to make payments online with just one or two clicks has become almost essential to any online store. It’s faster and a lot more convenient than typing in card details every time and now the users expect it. From a site owner’s perspective, the simpler a site is to use the better. Customers are much more likely to return if the experience they had on your site was pleasurable and a quick and simple checkout process can greatly enhance a site’s reputation for being easy to use.

Secondly, if your answer to the first question is to at least explore the possibilities, what payment options do you include? The number of payment options available is daunting to even the hardiest site owner, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Apple Pay, for example, supports a variety of transaction types and is free to integrate and use, but will only work on Apple devices, Apple apps and Macs. So how many mobile wallet providers should your eCommerce site provide? Are they all really necessary?

What mobile wallet payment options should be included in your eCommerce solution?

That’s a very tricky question because there are so many providers available. The answer depends significantly on the type and size of eCommerce site you run. PayPal, for example, is the online payment provider that everyone knows and trusts. They will take payment in a variety of currencies and is as convenient as the customer wants it to be, allowing everything from one click payment to accepting full card details online. The disadvantage of PayPal, however, is that they charge fees per transaction unlike some other mobile wallet providers. Of course, you’ve got to include Apple Pay and Google Pay as well – the convenience and security of the single payment wallet is becoming the norm for a good proportion of mobile phone owners and these options are also free to integrate. Amazon Pay is also available to use – everyone has an Amazon account, right? They have a similar business model to PayPal though, and charge per transaction.

That’s four options already and we’ve barely scratched the surface! Why not go the whole technological hog and include an option to pay by Bitcoin? That may be getting a little silly, to be honest, but this does illustrate the range of diversity and complexity of choices available. Each payment option has its advantages and disadvantages, and some extract their fee on every transaction as well.

What else do you need to consider?

Once the payment options have been decided there are still challenges to be addressed. Should traditional payment methods be provided as well as a mobile wallet? This is a definite consideration and will depend largely on your target customer. Not everyone has got a digital wallet yet and that’s likely to be the case for quite some time yet. The majority of site owners will want to keep their current payment options available as well. This will make sure that even the most reluctant customer to part with their money has a payment method that they can use.

Do you need to consider anything else? Of course, nothing is ever really that easy! What are the design and styling constraints of offering all these mobile wallet payment methods? Should they be separated from the more traditional methods or should the one click and traditional all be lumped together? Is it possible to dynamically offer different payment types depending on the platform being used on your site – ie is it worth excluding Google Pay from customers using an iPhone, and only offer Apple Pay?

Lastly, does any of this really matter because the customer is going to checkout anyway? This may be a question that you start asking yourself throughout the entire process, but if you haven’t, this is definitely the time to think it. It’s actually quite an important question and the answer partly relates back to the impression that a user will have of your site. It was mentioned earlier that a simple checkout process will make your site easier to use. It also improves the likelihood of repeat business and customer loyalty, something that every business owner should be working to improve. Overcomplicate the checkout process and a customer may not come back, or worse, abandon their basket and go elsewhere!

How can Xigen help you?

Our Project Managers at Xigen are a dab hand at helping you to make these sorts of decisions, our designers are absolute geniuses at creating a logical and pleasurable checkout experience integrating the methods of your choice, and our developers are wizards at making It all work smoothly. We all work together to provide an eCommerce solution that you can be proud of – no matter how many different payment options you want to give your customers!

The only question our Project Managers can’t help you with is this: why would anyone spend that much on shoes?!?