Hard on the heels of the launch of PayPal’s Website Payments Pro service earlier this month, Google wades into the fray by rolling out Google Checkout in the UK.
The Google online payments service has been on the go in the US since June last year, but is only now being extended to the UK.
As an incentive to sign up, Google Checkout merchants are being offered free sales transactions until 2008, plus retailers get free fraud protection with Checkout’s fraud prevention tools to protect them from fraudulent charge backs. And from January 1st 2008, for every £1 spent on AdWords, Google Checkout merchants can process £10 in sales for free through Google Checkout.
But Google is playing catch up with PayPal in the online payments market. Set up in 1999 and bought by eBay in 2002, PayPal currently enjoys a leading 25 per cent market share. Unlike PayPal's Website Payments Pro service, Google Checkout does not allow person-to-person transactions, and is not banned by eBay as a payment option.
Among the first UK companies to sign up for Google Checkout was e-commerce and search marketing technology provider, ChannelAdvisor.
James Scott, Director Marketplaces and E-commerce, at ChannelAdvisor UK commented: “One of the biggest issues faced by online retailers is checkout abandonment, although almost 40% of all online purchases begin with a search engine request, around two thirds of shopping baskets are abandoned before the sale is completed. With Google Checkout, retailers can now use Google services to both attract and convert buyers, reducing levels of abandonment, as well as saving significant amounts of money on payment processing costs.”
Where Google Checkout hopes to score is in the linkage between Google advertising and the online payment service. Once buyers have been issued with a Google Checkout account, which they can sign up for direct from the retailer’s site, a single login can be used for all stores that accept Google Checkout - one login, one shopping basket and one checkout irrespective of the number of retailers involved in the transaction.
Earlier story: PayPal widen their reach in web payment
