PayPal (PYPL) was down 2% on Wednesday on news that Apple (AAPL) Pay will be coming to mobile websites later this year.
In an attempt to steal a page from PayPal’s book, Apple’s looking to expand the usefulness of its payment service, letting online shoppers checkout easily in its Safari browser on iPhone and iPad models that use Apple’s fingerprint technology.
According to re/code:
PayPal offers a mobile payment product for websites and apps called One Touch, which is used by more than 250 of the top 500 online retailers. But Apple Pay is still a quicker and cleaner express-checkout option for iPhone users and can now compete with PayPal on more checkout pages.
Re/code also mentioned that the new integration would be available before the holiday shopping season.
Why it’s important
Apple Pay already works within several iOS apps, but online sales conversions are likely to increase dramatically if the company can execute mobile website integration.
As it stands, entering payment and shipping information into a mobile device isn’t fun. It’s slower than doing the same on desktop and many mobile websites don’t have a good enough process to make it easier — for example, not switching over to a keypad for someone to enter their credit card information.
With Apple Pay, users would simply have to use their fingerprint sensor and boom, all that information is immediately transmitted quickly and securely.
“For Apple Pay to get broader distribution, it would make sense to move Apple Pay to other platforms, similar to the iTunes cross-platform strategy. A successful digital wallet removes friction from transactions, and one way to do that is to make it available on different platforms,” Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told Quartz.
How it will do
In my opinion, expanding Apple Pay to mobile websites will be a huge success. With Apple releasing more and more iPhones that have the fingerprint scanning feature — even the new, cheaper iPhone SE — more users will have access to the service as they upgrade from older models.
