In the fast and frictionless checkout game, buy buttons have taken a circuitous route since first appearing on Amazon in 1995. But 27 years later, with the concept all grown up and accessible in more places than ever, retail’s embrace of the rapid checkout solutions may be just what’s needed to help the holiday selling season that’s now under threat.
Add to that the pull of numerous new and expanded point-of-sale (POS) options for buy now, pay later (BNPL), and merchants could have a powerful pair of retail technologies to drive up receipts as shopping intensifies.
As eCommerce merchants overhaul tech stacks and look for every edge, research shows they’re apt to find it in buy buttons that leverage consumer desires for easy checkout experiences in part by tapping into the psychology of impulse, leading to more, faster conversions.
PYMNTS analyzed this in the “2022 Buy Button Report: Accelerating Checkout Optimization,” surveying more than 800 top online retailers and finding that “online shoppers who used a buy button at checkout completed their purchase journeys in roughly half the time it took those who checked out via regular methods. Checkouts via buy button took just 68 seconds, on average, in Q2 2022 — 17% faster than they were in Q4 2020.”
Double-digit gains in checkout speed in under two years is an achievement by any standard, explaining why 79% of all online merchants now offer buy button checkout options. We found that PayPal holds “a commanding lead over all competitors, but Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay significantly expanded their buy button availability since our Q4 2020 report.”
Taken by itself, PayPal acts as a BNPL buy button on every site where it’s accepted as a payments method. This gives PayPal’s solution a kind of ubiquity that it’s building on, announcing its Pay Monthly solution a few months back.
In that announcement, PayPal Vice President of Shopping and Pay Later Greg Lisiewski said: “How consumers look to pay for larger purchases is evolving, and there is a growing demand for flexible payment options with 22 million PayPal customers using our pay later offering this past year. Pay Monthly builds on our commitment to deliver leading payment solutions that offer customers choice to ensure checkout matches their needs and budgeting preferences.”
While PayPal leads in the buy button race, the originator — Amazon — isn’t sitting idle. Earlier this year, the eCommerce titan introduced Buy With Prime, currently in invite-only test mode for merchants using Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), but it’s also being piloted with non-FBA merchants, as well as eCommerce sites outside of Amazon.
In that announcement, Amazon Vice President of Buy With Prime Peter Larsen said: “Allowing merchants to offer Prime shopping benefits on their own direct-to-consumer online stores is an exciting next step in our mission to help merchants of all sizes grow their business — whether on Amazon or beyond. With shoppers purchasing directly from merchants’ online stores, Buy With Prime will allow merchants to build customer relationships and brand loyalty while offering conversion-driving benefits like fast, free shipping.”
Installments Sealing More Deals
Despite some consumers getting overextended with BNPL loans, the wider trend is consumers getting smarter about their installments use going into the fourth quarter.
Among consumers using BNPL more strategically are those with available open-to-buy on revolving credit cards but who see advantages to using installments instead.
“For users with access to revolving credit, their open to buy is going to shrink a little bit, but they’re still not going to be willing to pay interest,” Nandan Sheth, CEO at BNPL provider Splitit, told PYMNTS. “They’re going to lean more toward, ‘I have credit … how can I leverage that credit without paying interest to extend my payments?’ Splitit and others that are trying to do something similar, I think we become a little bit more attractive for that segment and give them a unique way to leverage existing credit.”
Read more: BNPL at the Heart of the Great Consumer Credit Reset, Says Splitit CEO
Leading financial brands are not sitting out the BNPL wave either. In October 2021, American Express launched its Plan It BNPL card, also positioning it as a way for those with open-to-buy credit to hold onto it.
“When you buy now, pay later with Plan It, you can enjoy the flexibility to buy what you need — or want — while still earning rewards,” American Express said in an announcement. “And even if you can afford the purchase out of pocket, buy now, pay later options can offer more breathing room than if you were to pay the expense in full, right away.”
Citi offers yet another example, launching its Spot BNPL card in Australia in 2021, and the company is a key backer of ChargeAfter, “a flexible multi-lender network that provides retailers, banks, acquirers, financial institutions, and other strategic partners with a branded and white-label platform for POS consumer financing.”
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