There is one button I look for when I reach an online checkout:
This button is not decoration. It is the checkout.
When it is there, I confirm the card and details already on my device,
authenticate and move on. Without it, the store wants my name, address and card
details in another form. Sometimes it also wants an account and the privilege
of storing my card.
No. I wanted the thing in the cart, not a clerical relationship with your
database.
The shortest path gets the order
Apple Pay is close enough to one click to change my behaviour. The merchant
receives the delivery details I authorise, but I do not have to re-enter them.
It also receives a device-specific account number and a transaction-specific
security code instead of my actual card number. That is the documented
design, not a comforting little shield
icon beside a conventional card form.
This is not merely my impatience. In Baymard’s current cart-abandonment
research,
17% of shoppers had recently abandoned an order because checkout was too long
or complicated; 19% had left because they did not trust the site with their
card information. In a controlled experiment, Stripe measured a 22.3% average
increase in conversion when Apple Pay was
offered.
It is the provider’s dataset, but the direction is unsurprising.
Browser autofill is not equivalent. It can fail or fill the wrong field, and I
still inspect a form before submitting my card number. Nor will I let every
shop keep a card on file. Roughly once a year, an unauthorised transaction
forces me to replace my card and repair everything attached to it. More
card-on-file relationships assign me more trust and maintenance.
This is one reason I rarely buy from Core Electronics now unless it is the
only place with the part. Little Bird Electronics usually gets the order. The
products are often interchangeable; the checkout is not.
You lose more than one cart
Cart-abandonment statistics capture only the first-order damage. I may finish
an inconvenient checkout once because I have already chosen the product. What
I learn is to begin elsewhere next time. The original merchant never sees that
lost cart because I never return far enough to create it.
Losing one purchase is trivial. Training a frequent buyer to exclude your
store can redirect years of orders to a competitor.
A monopoly can get away with this. If you are the only seller with the item, I
will suffer through the form. Most shops are not monopolies. When another
seller has the same item at a similar price, checkout is part of the product
and the faster seller wins.
The excuse is usually gone
A custom payment stack can require merchant setup, domain verification and
testing. That is not the ordinary excuse for a shop using a modern provider or
hosted checkout. Apple tells merchants to contact their payment
provider. With Stripe’s hosted Checkout,
Apple Pay needs no integration change and can be enabled in payment-method
settings.
There is no special Apple toll either. Stripe charges the same as it does for
the underlying card transaction.
Apple Pay does not remove the ordinary card-processing fee; it does not add
another. If the checkout supports it, the remaining work may literally be
turning it on.
So turn it on. Do not make a willing customer transcribe information, expose a
card number or establish an account merely to give you money. They may tolerate
it today. The consequential decision is where they shop first next time.
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