Payment processing integration is one of the most important aspects of e-commerce application development because a smooth checkout process can make all the difference in decreasing the number of ‘abandoned carts’. Luckily things have steadily been improving as companies like PayPal and Amazon have injected innovation into the market with products like PayFlow Pro and Flexible Payments respectively.
Over the past weeks the battle for becoming the premium payments processing provider entered the next round with Amazon announcing the launch of Mobile Payments Service and PayPal launching PayPal X. The importance of both of these products is significant for everyone, the developer community, consumers and ultimately the two companies themselves. This fun report by The Next Web shows just how committed PayPal seems to be to the project.
Although these services will surely be successful and we’ll explore how we can best integrate both into NextWidgets, the ultimate winners in mobile payments may be the mobile carriers themselves. There is nothing easier and cheaper than being able to have a purchase charged straight to your mobile monthly bill. Carriers such as Vodafone and Swisscom are already experimenting in this direction.
Amongst these giants, there are also smaller companies offering innovative services. Zong has been pioneering the possibilities of making payments through the mobile phone for years, having created the first self-service solution for bloggers to charge for web content through mobile phones.
From a developers perspective, it becomes rather tricky to decide which services are best implemented in which markets and allocating resources accordingly, but overall the pace of change is a very positive thing for consumers who will enjoy the benefits of streamlined shopping through numerous mobile payment options.