eCommerce Checkouts Using Buy Button Are 46% Faster Than Without

The whole point of buy buttons is to cut to the chase, as it were, for customers who have made up their minds and want to pay. This simple approach has proven effective for merchants and payment methods, suggesting that digital commerce will benefit from its expansion.

Exploring this in the PYMNTS study “Buy Button Report: Accelerating Checkout Optimization” based on a survey of over 800 leading online retailers in the U.S. across 17 industry segments and over 200 merchants that use buy now, pay later (BNPL) installment credit, we found more retailers incorporating buy buttons into checkouts, but not always in optimal ways.

Per the study, “Buy buttons are still squeezing efficiency gains from checkout journeys. In Q2 2022, 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 that use buy button tech took 68 seconds, on average, in Q2 2022, which is 17% faster than in Q4 2020.

Put another way, buy buttons save consumers 148 million hours each year in online checkout.

However, a potentially troubling pattern was that 30% of the online merchants we surveyed in 2022 required customers using buy buttons to provide personal information, which is close to three times as many as did in Q4 2020. The study also found “a jump in the portion of eTailers that require accounts or profiles to use buy buttons, though this remains relatively low at 11%. Conversely, the share of eTailers allowing online customers to check out using a buy button without providing any personal information dropped sharply.”

Even so, the data shows that eCommerce checkouts completed via a buy button are 46% faster than those that do not use this feature, “shaving nearly a full minute from the checkout process on average. Buy buttons drop the average checkout time from 127 seconds to 68 seconds.”

Some are faster than others. The study states, “Apple Pay led the pack, facilitating an average 46% faster checkout compared to regular methods. Google Pay, PayPal, and Amazon Pay follow closely behind in significantly reducing the average time to check out, at 45%, 43%, and 41%, respectively. Secure Remote Commerce (SRC), the buy button technology led by the four major card issuers, trails measurably behind the other buy buttons, though it still achieved a 26% decrease in time to check out.”

Get your copy: Buy Button Report: Accelerating Checkout Optimization