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Two payment-services companies have separately introduced services designed to make it easier for merchants and consumers to engage in e-commerce and mobile commerce.
Payments-and-authentication-services provider Jumio Inc.’s newest service aims to make it easier for consumers to shop using smart phones and tablets. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Jumio says its new BAM Checkout combines its identity verification service with a payment capability that retailers can integrate into their mobile apps. BAM is an acronym of boron, aluminum, and magnesium, a compound with a lower coefficient of friction than Teflon, according to the Ames Laboratory.
“Friction in the checkout process is one of the biggest impediments to mobile commerce,” Marc Barach, Jumio chief marketing officer, tells Digital Transactions News. “And we believe it’s one of the most solvable ones.”
BAM Checkout works like this: Upon checkout in a retailer’s mobile app, the consumer taps a button to scan their information, Barach explains. That opens the device’s camera. The consumer is prompted to hold up a payment card to be scanned. The card number and expiration are populated in the checkout page.
The next prompt is to hold an identity card, like a driver’s license, in front of the camera. It, too, is scanned. The names from each card are cross referenced by Jumio to determine a match. If satisfactory, the name and address information from the identity card is placed into the checkout page data fields. The only information a consumer has to manually type is the card-verification code, Barach says. No photos or other data are stored on the device, Jumio says.
From there, once the buy button is tapped, the transaction moves along the merchant’s existing payment system, he says. The entry-level pricing for BAM Checkout is $795 monthly with an annual contract, Barach says. The fee is based on transaction volume.
A version of BAM Checkout for use with m-commerce Web sites should be available in the first quarter, Barach says.
BAM Checkout is available for integration in iOS and Android apps, and works with payment cards bearing marks from Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., Diners Club, American Express Co., JCB, UnionPay, and Discover Financial Services. BAM Checkout is available in the United States and United Kingdom.
BAM Checkout could aid mobile commerce conversion rates, says Mary Monahan, executive vice president and research director for mobile at Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin Strategy & Research.
“Definitely this would aid mobile commerce as it gets rid of the pain of trying to enter information into a tiny mobile keyboard,” she says. Her research finds that 27% of smart-phone owners want this capability.
Meanwhile, Flint Mobile Inc., Redwood City, Calif., has debuted its Sell Online feature to help its merchants accept online payments and manage them from a consolidated account.
To use the service a merchant enters the item, description, price, and an image, if he chooses, in the Flint site for merchants. The item can be a single service, like a photography session, or a package, like a series of personal-training sessions. Flint then creates a clickable button that can be embedded on the merchant’s Web site or a custom link to share via email, Facebook, and other social networks.
Clicking on the button does not redirect the consumer from the merchant’s Web site, Greg Goldfarb, Flint chief executive, tells Digital Transactions News. Flint’s customers have been asking for the service, Goldfarb says. They have a Web site, and want to take payments via it as well as from the Flint mobile application, he says, and they want all of that payment data to flow through a single account.
“Through one interface and one transaction dashboard, our customers can see all of their payments,” Goldfarb says.
Sell Online is adaptable to desktop and mobile devices. A Flint customer without a Web site can use Sell Online, too, he says. For these merchants, when a consumer clicks the Buy button a custom form opens in a browser window.
Flint charges no additional fee to use Sell Online. Its standard transaction fees are 1.95% for debit card payments and 2.95% for credit card transactions.
Flint also announced it lined up $9.4 million in additional funding.
