14 DAY TRIAL // Google is not giving up on its Checkout payments platform, despite it not making too much headway into the market, dominated by PayPal. Google is now leveraging its huge product catalog and has introduced a way of paying with Android phones using Checkout. The system is not seamless as it could be and seems rather experimental at this point, but there is definite potential for the product.
“Imagine you’re selling at a market or expo and want to take credit cards. Rather than hassle with cash, you can use the new Android Payment Extension for the Google Checkout Store Gadget on your laptop to allow Checkout customers to purchase from their phones,” Peng Ying, Google Checkout, wrote. “This extension helps merchants quickly set up a store and accept payments via Google Checkout and Android,” he added.
Setting up to use Google Checkout takes a few steps from the merchants. It involves creating a Checkout merchant account, as expected, but also creating a web storefront for the products they’re selling even if they’re not necessarily planning on offering they’re wares online. Finally, they have to install the Android Payment Chrome Extension for their browsers.
After that, things go smoother. After a customer has finished his or her shopping, merchants will have to create a shopping cart with all the items using the web store. The Chrome extension will then generate a QR code of the purchases and customers will be able to scan it with their Android phones and then proceed to pay for them with Google Checkout.
For the customer, it’s not much of a hassle, but it does involve more work than it should for the merchant. In some cases, the added convenience is worth the trouble, but it’s not the kind of thing that will catch on. Google knows this as well and sees this as first step. In that regard, the idea behind it certainly has potential and, implemented in a seamless way, should prove highly successful on a large scale.
The world is finally ready for a true mobile web, spurred by the increasing popularity of smartphones and the growing number of websites and mobile apps dedicated to them. While it’s still in its infancy, the mobile web is evolving at a furious pace and it’s hard to predict how people will use their phones even two years out. But one thing is almost guaranteed, people will use phones to make payments, as a replacement to credit cards. It’s anyone’s guess, though, who will be the major players in this emerging market.