Key Elements for In-App Payment Solutions

The four key elements for in-app payment solutions to enable optimized user experience.

The in-app payment industry has added billions of dollars in valuation since its inception in 2011. Mobile commerce, a more dominant space than in-app purchasing, will account for nearly 75% of eCommerce by the end of 2021.

The popularity of the in-app payment industry has led to businesses pursuing in-app payment solutions to drive more conversions.

Let’s look at some facts and numbers to determine the market size of in-app payment solutions.

• Globally, 59% of shoppers believe the ability to shop on mobile plays an important role when deciding what brand to buy from. (Think with Google)

• Research suggests 52% of shopping traffic comes from mobile phones, and over time, desktop traffic has been dropping.

• App users will spend 18 more minutes shopping than their desktop counterparts within a month.

• As of 2019, Google and Apple hit a fresh milestone after users downloaded over 204 billion applications. There are 2.9 million applications available for download on Google Play.

• The average android consumer for in-app purchases spends $0.43 and $1.08 for an iOS consumer.

The above numbers indicate the importance of pursuing an in-app purchasing solution for your business. As per data from 2016, the average growth rate of the landscape stands at 33%. Sales from mobile commerce alone are expected to hit $3.56 trillion this year up from $2.91 trillion last year.

In-app Payment Rules as Outlined by Google and Apple

Google and Apple are so far the biggest and fastest-growing mobile technology platforms. There are the drivers of in-app mobile commerce and have already outlined guidelines for using their checkout or any 3rd party payment gateway. If your business is building an in-app payments gateway, checking the guidelines is crucial.

Google In-App Purchases Guidelines

Google outlined the following guidelines for developers and businesses building on the Android platform.

1. Implement Google Play’s In-App Billing when creating an application that offers digital products within a game.

2. Businesses and developers should opt for Google Play in App billing as their default payment method except in the following cases:

• Payment for physical products

• Digital content for consumption outside the application - for example, a song.

Apple In-App Purchase Guidelines

The following are rules for developers to follow when integrating checkout on an IoS application as outlined by Apple:

1. You must satisfy requirements before integrating your iOS application with in-app purchases from any third-party mobile payment gateways.

2. iOS applications where users buy digital products require Apple’s in-app purchases. For physical products, goods, and services, developers can use any third-party in-app payment gateway.

Elements for In-App Payment Solutions

If you are servicing customers with physical goods or services, here are guidelines you need to keep in mind when choosing a 3rd party in-app payment solution. The following features will be a great boost to your business and might be what you’ve been missing to push conversions.

1. Personalization

Go deep into your customers' behaviors and learn what motivates them, what they are looking for, and what appeals to them. This way you will build an effective and personalized in-app purchase gateway with your customer’s currency type, language, and a method for auto-filling when filling in forms for billing, contact, and shipping info using previously used info. Such personalization will motivate your customers to complete pending transactions and minimize abandoned carts. According to Gartner, personalizing eCommerce boosts engagement by 70.3%.

2. Customization

As much as you need to personalize your business to appeal to your customer’s preferences, you also need to customize your in-app payment solution according to your brand image to attract loyalty. Pick a checkout solution that can be integrated and assimilated into your application easily. The solution should support Android Payment SDK or the iPhone Payment SDK - these are software development kits for either platform that will grant you access to different ways of customizing your brand logos, colors, UI, UX, and a smooth development environment for non-technical business owners. Besides the SDKs, some in-app payment solutions have hosted solutions for customizing the checkout.

For instance, XanPay integrates into your existing infrastructure through an API. The interface provides three different methods - embedding a widget, full-page checkout, or with API. It also offers an optimized experience to your clients.

3. Localized Payment Options

Appeal to your customer’s preferences by adding an in-app checkout that carters to preferred local payment methods. For example, the United States prefer shopping with their credit cards, the Netherlands prefers direct bank drafts, East Africa would find an M-Pesa integration suitable, and Asian countries would like solution like XanPay that offers localized payment options. As you observed, the diversity of these payment options calls for the same additions on your checkout. This will make it easy and quick for customers to checkout through a payment method they understand.

4. Seamless Integration

The existing internet consumer market has zero tolerance for low-quality user experience, and most customers will judge the quality of internet business at first sight of UX. Hence, businesses should pursue effective solutions with the minimum input. If they find your store is lagging and the process of making a purchase is slow and long, they will move to another store. Therefore, make those in-app purchase solutions robust, fast, and intuitive. The important thing is to endeavor for your application to function cross-platform and integrate easily with mainstream technology.

Bottom Line

Fast-track your business with a robust in-app purchase checkout gateway. Remember to beef up security and fraud detection. Find robust scalability solutions that do not affect the performance of your UI, and you will attest to reliable checkout being a key driver of sales and conversions.