How Stripe Will Revolutionise Mobile Payments
Stripe is an established online payment processor that is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative to PayPal for those who wish to pay with their credit or debit cards online. What makes Stripe particularly interesting and useful is that users can save their details on Stripe’s servers for quick and easy payment.
The payment form can be displayed inline on the checkout screen, and users know that if they pay with Stripe their details are going to the Stripe server, not the website from which they are buying. This adds an extra layer of trust, which can be invaluable when you are buying from new or unfamiliar retailer.
Introducing Stripe Relay
Stripe Relay will, hopefully, do for m-commerce what the standard variant of Stripe has been doing for e-commerce. The current state of affairs with mobile commerce is hardly ideal. Users have to contend with long-winded shopping carts, cumbersome payment forms and slow-loading pages. Given those issues, it’s little surprise that mobile conversions are still so poor compared with desktop transactions.
A handful of companies have produced native apps for shopping on mobile. Instacart is a good example of mobile shopping done well, with easy payment processing, and the ability to complete the whole transaction within one app instead of having to load a separate browser.
A New API for Merchants
The Stripe Relay API will allow merchants to offer a native, smooth and simplified shopping experience for customers. To facilitate the integration of the API, Stripe has added a few new objects, including SKUs and Orders. These will allow merchants to send data about the transaction to Stripe, enabling seamless, instant purchases in third-party apps.
It’s also possible to integrate Stripe with existing e-commerce platforms. The integration is currently limited to SAP Hybris, but there will be further platforms added over the coming months.
Relay is aimed not just at merchants, but also at app developers. The potential of the platform is clear; imagine a price comparison app that allows shoppers to buy from a range of stores with a few screen taps, or a hobby-focused app with tutorials, where users can buy items from the “You Will Need…” list without having to leave the app.
Stripe Relay will remove some of the friction from mobile commerce, and that can only be good news for store owners who are looking to reach the largest possible audience.
Interested in using Stripe or Stripe Relay within your website or business? Get in touch!