Tech giant Apple is reportedly getting ready to debut Apple Pay and its fingerprint purchasing method across multiple Web sites later this year. The company is said to be telling potential partners that it would be expanding Apple Pay to online payments before the 2016 holiday shopping season.
Apple Pay lets shoppers complete purchases on mobile apps with just their fingerprints instead of by entering credit card details. The service will be available via the Safari browser on iPhones and iPads that use Apple’s TouchID fingerprint technology, according to a Re/code report. While the service might also come to Apple laptops and desktops, Re/code’s sources couldn’t confirm that bit of information.
Watch Out, PayPal
The move would put Apple Pay in direct competition with online payment giant PayPal. PayPal’s mobile payment system, OneTouch, is used by 50 percent of the top 500 online retailers via Web sites and mobile apps. Apple is anticipating that its faster and more efficient checkout system will be used by iPhone owners to gain ground on PayPal.
Forrester Research Inc.’s marketing and strategy analyst, Thomas Husson, told us the ubiquity of mobile apps makes that arena a perfect place for Apple Pay to try to gain a foothold.
“[The move] would make sense given the fact that mobile Web still plays a key role in the discovery and explore phase of the customer life cycle,” said Husson. “If consumers spend about 80 percent of their time within apps — and if apps are better designed for the most loyal customers — many mobile transactions are still conducted via mobile Web sites.”
Apple Advantage
Apple Pay launched in late 2014, gaining attention with its ability to enable in-store shopping via newer iPhones. The service also offers Apple Pay for in-app purchases. The percentage of purchases made on mobile devices is growing rapidly, even though more than half of online retail purchases are still done via desktop and laptop computers at this point.
The appeal of Apple Pay to online merchants is basic: the promise of converting more mobile visitors into purchasers. According to Internet analytics company ComScore, retailers saw a total of almost 10 billion visits to their mobile Web sites during the 2015 holiday season, as opposed to about 8 billion to retailers’ mobile apps.
To use Apple Pay, an individual adds credit card or debit card information, which is stored in a placeholder number in the user’s device. That number is then matched up with payment card information only after the number has been confirmed by the user’s bank or credit card company. With Apple’s fingerprint sensor, a user does not have to enter payment or shipping information during a purchase.
The next frontier for Apple Pay will be to move beyond payments by offering a combined checkout experience that takes into account things like coupons and loyalty rewards, according to Husson. “Merchants will then decide who’s bringing the most value in terms of incremental revenue, higher conversion rates and faster check-out experiences,” he said.
Image Credit: Apple Pay images via Apple.
