Shopify Pay Rethinks Mobile Checkout
The mobile checkout experience on Shopify is now far less tedious for shoppers browsing on their smartphones. The e-commerce company today announced Shopify Pay, a new feature that lets customers save their payment details, including shipping and credit card info, to quickly check out without entering payment details each time.
The e-commerce portal has whittled down its mobile checkout process from 16 steps to two taps, adding Shopify Pay as another payment option available within the platform, alongside Apple Pay, PayPal, and others. Satish Kanwar, VP of Product at Shopify, told PCMag that, for Shopify's 400,000-plus online merchants, more than 50 percent of total conversions are now coming from mobile devices despite the relatively high degree of friction at the checkout point. Shopify Pay is what Kanwar described as a ground-up redesign of that final stage in the mobile shopping user flow.
"We take mobile conversions very seriously and have been improving the foundations of our checkout experience," said Kanwar. "The goal of Shopify Pay is that we don't want anyone to fill out that checkout form again unless they have to. That's a reality of what shoppers expect as they interact with brands again and again online."
The Shopify Pay experience also comes with opt-in texting and security authentication features built in. As Kanwar explained, identity verification goes through the phone number itself. When a returning user with Shopify Pay enabled wants to check out, they simply enter their email address to receive a 6-digit order notification via SMS. Once authenticated, the user's saved payment info will be pre-filled and they can check out in a matter of seconds. The payment data is encrypted end to end and stored on Shopify's PCI-compliant severs.