Zooz: “eCommerce Consumers Prefer Credit Cards”

By Pete Rizzo (@pete_rizzo_)

You’d be forgiven for not knowing exactly what Zooz does off the bat – It’s Hebrew for “move,” and it reflects the company’s vision of providing payments on the go.

But, while Zooz’s name may be hard for U.S. users to parse, the Israel-based payment platform has staked its reputation on creating an eCommerce and mCommerce experience that users understand intuitively.

In support of this goal, Zooz unveiled a new HTML5 checkout solution on September 9 meant to unify the customer experience across both devices and platforms.

“During these past years we’ve come to realize that users aren’t tech experts, and they don’t speak in terms of ‘mobile,’ ‘native’ and ‘responsive,'” Noam Inbar, vice president of business development at Zooz, told PYMNTS.com in an interview. “They just want to have a quick experience wherever they are and however they choose.”

Founded in 2010, Zooz is still new to the space, but according to Inbar, its already found the keys to appealing to eCommerce consumers.

What current trends does Zooz see influencing mobile payments in the coming years, and how does it stack up to rival PayPal? For these answers and more, we spoke to Inbar in an exclusive interview.

PYMNTS.com: This is the first time we’ve had Zooz on PYMNTS.com, but not the first time we’ve covered your company. Can you give us a brief synopsis of Zooz and its mission?

Noam Inbar: Zooz is an online payment solution that enables eCommerce merchants to optimize their payment process, frontend to backend, across all platforms. We believe that payments should be focused on people and not on technical aspects. Our mission is to optimize the payment process while maintaining the ultimate balance between a fast user experience and top-notch security, through our patent pending technology.

A focal point for Zooz is one-tap payments. Can you walk us through a consumer use case of Zooz?

The common approach out there relies on the “username/password” experience, which means that even when merchants or payment service providers (PSPs) store credit details, they require the user to type in his credentials in order to enjoy a one-click payment.

Our unique technology relies on an authentication of the user’s device, so the device itself functions as the username and password, making it both easier and more secure for the user.

When a user pays for the first time on a Zooz-enabled merchant site or app, he simply types in the necessary payment details. The next time the user pays on any other Zooz-enabled merchant site, we present him with the last payment method that he used, asking only for CVV for verification purposes.

So, the user actually enjoys this fast, one-click experience, across different merchant websites and apps. Another key advantage for the merchant is that the details are entered on the Zooz overlay, so the merchant doesn’t have to be PCI compliant or deal with management of tokens and identification of users since that’s already done for him.

Zooz has been operating in the payments space since 2010. What has the company learned about payments in this time, or what trends are shaping Zooz now that say weren’t a factor three years ago?

Zooz started out with a software development kit (SDK) for checkout on mobile. Over time we started seeing merchants implement our mobile solution on websites because their users enjoyed the experience and wanted to have it on the web as well.

During these past years we’ve come to realize that users aren’t tech experts, and they don’t speak in terms of ‘mobile,’ ‘native,’ ‘responsive’ etc., they just want to have a quick experience wherever they are and however they choose. We invest a lot of resources in crafting different experiences specifically for different users, because they expect nothing less.

What would you say to merchants or developers that believe PayPal will be the better option for facilitating mobile payments because of the size of its user base?

PayPal is a very good solution. Dwolla, Klarna, Kiwi and many other [mobile wallets] have become popular across the globe, but still the vast majority of eCommerce consumers prefer credit cards.

We believe that the key lies in offering as many payment options as possible, and letting the users choose their preferred method. True, user base is very important. However, as new innovators come into the payment space, there are a lot of new solutions that will be able to challenge the PayPal experience and offer worthy alternatives.

Currently, Zooz is operating in the U.S., Europe and Canada, are there plans to expand soon? If so, what challenges do you foresee abroad?

Zooz’s main strength is in the flexibility of the platform, enabling businesses to work globally and move fast. We’re currently entering into the Asian market and exploring big opportunities in other new markets.

In the world of payments, every market is a new challenge: identifying user payment habits and barriers, identifying and integrating leading alternative payment schemes, creating support for multiple languages and currencies, and most importantly, connecting with the right processors that would be suitable for our merchants’ business needs.

But ultimately, people are people wherever they live. As long we continue focusing on consumers’ needs, the rest are details.