Less than two months after its rollout, One Touch for Web is expanding to merchants and consumers internationally, starting with Canada and the U.K. The next countries to experience One Touch are not known yet, but the rollout will continue over the summer. This is great news and probably much better publicity than last week’s fiasco when the online payment giant was under fire for the inclusion of robocalling in its policies.
One Touch for Web enables consumers to securely pay with a single click on the Web after their first login. It’s all about getting friction out of the payment experience, explained PayPal’s GM of Retail, Brad Brodigan, to Karen Webster at the beginning of the month (June 1). It was initially launched last year for native mobile on iOS and Android. Most PayPal merchants will automatically have One Touch enabled for their customers without needing to do any integration.
According to Paypal’s blog post, One Touch helps to increase customer adoption and address checkout abandonment. Merchants like Airbnb, Boxed, Jane.com, Lyft, Munchery and YPlan have experienced an immediate increase in sales, average order values, customer adoption and loyalty.
The potential is indeed huge. Worldwide, the soon to be independent PayPal is in over 200 countries and supports 25 currencies, and its 165 million shoppers can buy with PayPal on an increasingly large number of websites. With 165 million active users worldwide, if it were a nation, it would be the eighth largest country on earth.
“Honestly, we think rolling out PayPal Web will be the biggest upgrade to eCommerce since PayPal launched 15 years ago,” PayPal Senior Vice President Bill Ready (and former Braintree CEO) told Karen Webster recently.
Meanwhile, competitor ApplePay is planning to launch its services in the U.K. in July, according to the BBC (though initially rumored for June), giving PayPal a head start on the European market.
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