PayPal’s 2024 opens with the keynote PayPal First Look held by Alex Chriss, President and CEO of the company.
A few numbers to start – just to remember how widespread PayPal is in the world – and then Chriss reveals 6 very interesting innovations designed to facilitate customers and sellers.
“PayPal is introducing six new innovations that will not only solve real customer problems, but which we believe will change the world of payments and commerce. – explained the President and CEO of PayPal – From new solutions for merchants to speed checkout and personalize offers, to a new consumer app that will give our loyal customers more reasons to shop with PayPal, to the next generation of Venmo Designed to be the growth platform for local small businesses, PayPal has always brought the future of money to our consumers and merchants, and today marks the next revolution.”
But what are these new features?
A new checkout
Checkout is the last phase of a purchase, that of payment. The ultimate interaction between consumer and merchant.
If you think it’s the easiest step, you’re wrong.
Yes, I first have to decide to make the purchase, choose where, choose the item and it’s all already complex. But if I do all this and the checkout experience is slow and unsatisfactory, I might even give up.
To address this problem, PayPal has decided to significantly speed up the checkout process to make customers choose PayPal by integrating passkeys to allow users to log in with their face or fingerprint with a single tap and improve latency.
All this this should reduce latency and allow customers to checkout twice as fast, all with the same level of security and trust they expect from PayPal. Additionally, PayPal’s new checkout will also use AI to become smarter and faster over time.
Fastlane by PayPal
Do you know when you have gone through the entire process described above and then you are asked to log in?
This is where it will come into play Fastlane by PayPal, a new one-click checkout experience that merchants will be able to offer to their shoppers.
Customers simply save their information with Fastlane for one-tap checkoutor. No usernames or passwords to remember, no personal information to update, no need to share a credit card with companies all over the web.
Why did we talk about it in the future tense? Because Fastlane by PayPal is currently in the testing phase, a test reserved for some sellers.
How is it going? Some merchants on BigCommerce, a leading open software-as-a-service (SaaS) e-commerce platform and longtime partner of PayPal, have seen that Fastlane can recognize 70% of guests and speed up checkout by almost 40% versus a traditional guest checkout process.
PayPal News 2024: PayPal Smart Receipts are arriving
Merchants want to encourage customers to return and consumers want to find the best deals, so PayPal will introduce the Smart Receipts.
Confused?
Let’s try to explain: when consumers make purchases with PayPal, they will receive a receipt that allows them not only to track their purchase, but also to receive a personalized recommendation along with a cashback offer. All thanks to artificial intelligence.
Nearly 45% of PayPal customers globally open email receipts every day which could translate to hundreds of millions of consumers seeing timely, hyper-relevant recommendations and rewards in these receipts.
The introduction of PayPal’s advanced bidding platform
Currently, when consumers shop online, their experience only includes ads generated by their browsing behavior. In short, that thing where you go to a website and then open your favorite news magazine – techgameworld.com, naturally – and then you find banners associated with the previous website.
PayPal wants to change things. As? Using customer insights to create a dynamic and personalized platform of advanced offers which will give merchants the ability to reach customers based on what they actually purchased on the Internet, down to the inventory management unit (SKU) and individual product.
This new platform will use AI to organize and analyze data from nearly half a trillion dollars in trade transactions globally and will also enable merchants to Personalize offers to customers by paying based on actual performance, not clicks or impressions.
There is also an advantage for users: more relevant offers and opportunities to earn rewards.
However, respect for privacy always comes first, so customers can decide whether or not to share their data with merchants.
Cambio l’app PayPal
PayPal’s news for 2024 isn’t over yet.
Later in the year it will also arrive a new application to give customers even more reasons to shop and pay with PayPal every day.
In fact, it will arrive in March CashPass to give customers access to hundreds of personalized offers and cashback from leading brands in the United States. The user simply taps on the offer, shops at that store, and checks out with PayPal.
And yes, expect highly respected partners for this initiative such as eBay, McDonald’s, Ticketmaster, Uber and Walmart.
The next generation of Venmo business profiles
You remember it Venmo? It is an online payment platform, daughter of PayPal, which can be used to send and receive money between friends and family.
However, the service also includes company profiles, available from 2021 and created to help companies grow. Now these profiles evolve for helping small businesses get discovered.
There will be sign-up buttons, profile rankings, and the ability to offer promotions to consumers to increase traffic, generate sales, and more significantly grow your business.
However, all these innovations presented by PayPal will arrive first of all in the United States during the year. To have news on Italy we will have to wait.
