As our Roaming Report suggested last week, Portaltech and PayPal have partnered to help retailers offer their customers a fast and secure checkout experience on mobile devices. The move comes shortly after PayPal released its Mobile Express Checkout – a mobile optimised version of its Express Checkout service.
Mark Adams, Sales Director at Portaltech explains: “As Smartphone adoption increases and mCommerce becomes more important to Portaltech and our retail clients, we recognised the need to expand the payment options on our QuickLive mCommerce solution and to find a quick and easy payment solution for end customers that would make payment via mobile, convenient, seamless and secure.”
Portaltech’s partnership with PayPal was driven by recent research conducted by the company and eDigital Research; in this study, the companies sought to understand the influencing factors and features of mobile apps, from a consumer’s perspective. Of those people polled, ‘Convenience’ was one of the top 3 most mentioned benefits of shopping via a mobile phone. 86% revealed that they already have a PayPal account and a further 8% said they ‘Wanted one’. The study also found that 20% of those with a smartphones had made a purchase via their mobile phones, with an incredible 93% rating this as a ‘positive experience’. A further 20% said they “Expected to spend more via their mobiles in the next 12 months.“
Rachel Wilkinson, Head of Brand & Retail at Portaltech says: ‘Our QuickLive mCommerce app for the iPhone provides a mobile platform for retailers to showcase their range to consumers who want to browse and buy quickly and easily via their mobiles. Key to the success of any app is the convenience and usability factor and we wanted to ensure that we got the checkout functionality right” she continued: “Our research showed that the majority of customers polled already had a PayPal account and that PayPal was the preferred payment method via mobile. In addition there are 26 million PayPal accounts held in the UK. We couldn’t ignore this feedback and PayPal became a ‘must have’ feature for our QuickLive mCommerce checkout.
Cameron McLean, General Manager, Merchant Services, PayPal UK, commented: “PayPal sees mobile as the next wave of growth for retailers. We have opened our secure payment platform to third parties like Portaltech to enable them to develop innovative mobile solutions for their clients. Shoppers can use their PayPal account to pay on their mobile phones, with the same security and convenience they enjoy on their PC.”
Portaltech’s first retailer iPhone App using PayPal’s Mobile Express Checkout will be released for L.K. Bennett in September.
