Understanding The Necessity Of One-Click Payments With Akhil Mittal
In the highly competitive fintech industry, providing a seamless user experience is crucial to retaining customers. Paramount Commerce, Canada’s leading bank account-based payment partner, recently launched its One-Click payments feature. To understand the main goals behind the One-Click feature, how the team prepared for the launch, and the benefits merchants and consumers can expect, we spoke with Akhil Mittal, the Vice President of Product Management at Paramount Commerce.
Q1: What was the main goal behind launching the One-Click feature in Canada?
Akhil Mittal: Our mission at Paramount Commerce is to simplify payments for our merchants and users. By reducing the number of clicks required to complete a transaction, we make it easy for users to complete subsequent payments quickly in a single click. Our goal is to remove friction from the checkout experience, which can help with conversion and make it more likely that users will want to use our payment method again. The one-click experience is a key feature that helps us stand out from other payment methods.
Q2: Are there any other businesses or industries where this feature is available?
Akhil Mittal: Amazon pioneered the concept of 1-Click payments, but that was limited to credit cards only. There are other industry players such as Shopify, Stripe, and PayPal, where one-click payments play an important role in e-commerce checkout. But in other high-growth markets such as the online gaming space, there is a lack of streamlined payment options, so we got to work based on our experience with tokenizing users’ banking details to provide a frictionless experience for users.
Q3: What work has your team done to prepare for the launch of One-Click?
Akhil Mittal:
Customer research: Our team did extensive interviewing of our users to understand pain points and gain insight into what really matters to them.
Data analysis: Conversion rate at checkout is the key metric for merchants. From the data, we can tell that quicker, streamlined checkout leads to a higher metric, and the biggest driver of that is repeat users.
Market research: One-click is not a new concept as it has been adopted by many e-commerce platforms though only with credit cards so we looked at these platforms as their one-click feature has significant user adoption.
Merchant interviews: Our team conducted merchant interviews to understand the challenges they faced with payment methods such as credit cards and the need for alternative options.
Q4: What benefits can merchants expect with One-Click payments?
Akhil Mittal: Today, in a world of fierce business competition, merchants invest significant resources to attract consumers to use their platforms, sportsbooks, and betting apps. This is often achieved through promotions and campaigns. With that up-front spend in mind, it’s crucial that users can pay quickly and easily, without being bogged down by a cumbersome payment process. Ideally, users should be able to focus on the purchase or game rather than spending time paying. Therefore, reducing friction in the payment journey is the top priority to ensure a seamless and satisfying user experience. While marketing is essential, ease of use ultimately determines whether users convert, and our One-Click payments feature provides that frictionless payment experience and drives customer loyalty.
Q5: What sets Paramount Commerce apart from other payment processors in Canada with the launch of One-Click?
Akhil Mittal: As a company, we always strive to be innovative and adaptable. We’ve been a leader in bank account-based payment in Canada from the beginning, so we’re always looking for ways to solve problems and improve the merchant and user experience. While One-Click helps streamline the user experience, we also need to consider how to differentiate ourselves and retain customers in a competitive market. With limited options for payment methods on a cashier or checkout process, it’s important to bring in users who are already familiar with One-Click, which gives us an edge in the market and benefits merchants by providing a smoother payment experience for their customers.
Q6: How can merchants offer One-Click payments?
Akhil Mittal: This feature is available to merchants through our bank-account-based solutions making it possible for users to complete payments with just one click. Our goal is to provide the best user experience—not only in the online gaming industry—but also across different industries. This way, users can recognize our brand and easily complete payments with just one click. One-Click increases the likelihood that our payment solutions will be used for repeat transactions.
Q7: It’s my understanding the One-Click feature is just the first step. What are your future plans for building on the one-click capability to improve the payment experience for merchants and consumers in the Paramount Network?
Akhil Mittal: The One-Click payments feature is just the beginning as Paramount Commerce is developing a Cross-Merchant One-Click capability feature that will enable repeat customers to make purchases with a single click on any merchant’s website, even if they have never shopped at that store before. This feature will be very beneficial for merchants as Paramount’s one-million-plus customers can pay with a single click at any merchant that uses Paramount’s payment solution. This will create a network effect, benefitting both merchants and users by offering them a ubiquitous single-click experience.
