One-click checkout: A guide for businesses

“To boost conversion and shopper loyalty, retailers need to focus on simplifying checkout and providing friction-free, secure experiences at every touchpoint of the customer journey.”

Kal Raman, Bolt President

Every day, your customers will experience challenges, blockers – things they find frustrating or difficult. Making a purchase from your online store, however, doesn’t have to be one of them.

With one-click checkout, you can unburden your customers of having to enter their billing, shipping, and payment information every time they want to buy from you. Instead, you can empower them to check out with a single click: boosting how they think and feel about your business, while simultaneously improving your conversion rates and growing your revenue.

Below, we’ll explore everything you, as a merchant, need to know about one-click checkout: from how to offer it and how it works to the technology’s key benefits for your business.

So, is one-click checkout right for your online store in 2024? Let’s explore. 

What is a one-click checkout?

One-click checkout is when you enable consumers to make a purchase from your business online – without having to enter their billing, payment, and shipping details.

Instead of having to enter their name, billing address, shipping address, and credit or debit card number to complete a purchase, one-click checkout allows your customers to check out, as the name suggests, in a single click. This simplifies, streamlines, and speeds up the checkout experience for your ecommerce business’s time-poor, convenience-craving customer base.

For one-click checkout to be available, the customer will just need to have saved their card information with your business after a previous purchase – usually by creating an account. This makes one-click checkout an important tool for engendering brand loyalty and keeping your returning customers happy – and a must-have for any store that relies heavily on repeat business.

One-click checkout was first offered by Amazon in 1999, who also patented the technology (once valued at $2.4 billion a year) until the patent’s expiry in 2017.

How to offer one-click checkout

To offer one-click checkout, you’ll need to partner with the right payment service provider.

These are the companies, like Checkout.com, responsible for accepting payments on your behalf. They possess the technology to save cards on file in a secure way: allowing you to offer one-click checkout to your customers, as well as relieving you of the more stringent requirements of complying with PCI DSS: regulations for merchants around safeguarding cardholder data which you must, as a merchant accepting credit and debit cards, adhere to.

Without a reputable payment service provider in your corner, it’ll be hard to implement a one-click checkout system that’s not only effective and fully PCI compliant but that updates the saved card information automatically to prevent payment failure.

Here at Checkout.com, we’ll work with you to understand your business’s needs and help you implement our one-click checkout solution into your ecommerce store’s setup. Better still – and in a massive boost for our merchants’ conversion rates – we’ve recently partnered with Bolt to make its industry-leading one-click checkout solution available to Checkout.com customers.

What that means for you, as a business accepting payments through Checkout.com, is access to a best-in-class one-click checkout option to simplify your payment flow and reduce cart abandonment. 

But more on our new collaboration with Bolt shortly. First, how does one-click checkout work?

Read more: What is PCI compliance? A guide for businesses

How does one-click checkout work?

There are three ways your business can offer accelerated checkout to your customers.

Here at Checkout.com, for example, you can:

• Take advantage of our partnership with Bolt, a leading one-click checkout provider
• Use our real-time account updater: which saves and stores your customers’ card details and even keeps them updated should this debit or credit card information change. This enables you to process recurring payments, such as subscriptions or memberships.
• Implement one-click checkout via digital wallets, such as Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Read on for more information about integrating these three methods into your checkout flow.

Implementing one-click checkout with Checkout.com and Bolt

Here’s a more general description of how Bolt’s one-click checkout works.

A customer makes a purchase with any online retailer in the Bolt Network for the first time. They manually enter their shipping and payment information in a few streamlined checkout fields to complete their purchase easily and successfully.

At this stage, the customer can opt to create an account with one click - saving their information for future purchases. This means that the next time they shop with any merchant in the Bolt Network, they can log into their account with a one-time password or biometric passkey. Once authenticated, they are able to check out with a single click - even if they’ve never shopped with that particular merchant before.

Implementing one-click checkout with our real-time account updater

With Checkout.com’s real-time account updater, we won’t just store your customer base’s saved card details; we’ll automatically update them, too.

So, if that payment information changes – perhaps because of a lost, stolen, or simply replaced debit or credit card – it won’t affect your ability to process pre-arranged payments. This reduces the chance of payment failure and involuntary customer churn, and safeguards this vital source of recurring revenue for your business.

Implementing one-click checkout with Apple Pay and Google Wallet

With more than 45 million Apple Pay users and over 25 million Google Wallet users in the US alone, these digital wallets are an extremely popular way to pay. And – here’s the kicker – both support one-click payments from your customer’s smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.

What’s more, it’s simple to implement these in-demand payment methods into your Checkout.com-powered online store – you’ll find step-by-step guides for doing this with both digital wallets in our documentation.
That wide user base isn’t the only reason you’ll want to add one-click checkout to your online store, of course. So what are one-click checkout’s other big selling points?

Benefits of one-click checkout

One-click checkout is a must for online stores in 2024 – but why?

Let’s explore the top benefits of one-click checkout or your business.

Higher conversion rates

On average, three in four customers (76%) abandon their carts before completing a purchase – a damning statistic that can have a profound impact on your conversion rates.

Fortunately, adding a one-click checkout option to your online store is an excellent way to combat cart abandonment. By reducing the amount of steps your customer has to complete to wrap up their purchase, a one-click checkout function provides a frictionless experience – boosting your conversion rates and, ultimately, your sales and revenue too.

Efficient checkout flow

A key benefit of one-click checkout for customers? Efficiency.

After all, Baymard Institute reports that the average large-sized ecommerce site can gain a huge 35.26% conversion rate increase – simply through better, more efficient design alone.

One-click checkout allows customers to progress from perusing your products, to placing them in your basket, to paying for them: without becoming tied up in the red tape of entering their details. This gives them fewer reasons (and less time) to talk themselves out of the transaction, or get distracted and click away from your site – equating to more completed purchases.

Because the stark reality is that, unfortunately, most US ecommerce businesses don’t offer an efficient checkout experience. In the US, the average checkout flow contains a whopping 24 form elements – when actually, the ideal checkout flow can be half this size. (12 to 14 elements, to be precise, and as few as 7 or 8 elements if you’re only counting the form fields.)

What does this mean for you, as a merchant? That cutting down the mandatory form fields you require your customer to fill out at checkout – and optimizing your checkout flow for efficiency – can be a key point of difference to set your online business apart from your competitors. 

Through that lens, implementing one-click checkout isn’t just common sense – it makes business sense.

Higher mobile purchases

The link between one-click checkout and more purchases is particularly strong on mobile. Cart abandonment is, after all, highest on mobile devices, with smartphone cart-abandonment rates of 85.65% dwarfing those of tablets (80.74%) and desktop computers (73%). But why?

Well, customers buying from your site on mobile devices tend to often be on the go: meaning they often have less time to make a purchase, and more outside distractions in the way of them doing so. Plus, there’s the obvious fact that, compared to desktop computers, mobile devices have small screens. Inputting information into them can be tricky at the best of times – but even more so from a crowded bus or train, as a customer jostles with other commuters.

One-click checkout removes these difficulties, making impulse purchases easier, faster, and more likely on mobile devices.

Builds trust

According to Baymard Institute, 25% of shoppers have left an ecommerce store without completing their purchase – for the sole reason that they didn’t trust that site with their card information. This means that building trust at the checkout is vital – and what better way to do so than by offering the most streamlined, seamless payment experience possible?

Offering a one-click checkout, for example, through Checkout.com and Bolt’s recent partnership, exudes professionalism; demonstrating to your customers that you not only recognize their busy schedules, but respect them, too. Naturally, this builds trust, engenders loyalty, and encourages the customer to associate your brand with authenticity and authority.

Better customer experience

First impressions are vital; and your customers will, naturally, form a lasting idea of your brand and business through their experience on your website.

If this is an experience characterized by clunky, confusing payment pages or a checkout process that places too many cognitive demands on the customer – a.k.a. a bad one – it’ll speak volumes about your business; and, as a result, the products and services you provide, too.

By contrast, the slick payment experience one-click checkout offers paints a different picture of your brand: one as sharp, modern, and thoroughly pleasant to do business with. It’s a smooth, seamless experience your customer can extrapolate out to inform wider, positive perceptions around your business: perceptions that will keep them returning to, and recommending, your brand going forward.

Faster purchases

Put simply, one-click checkout is faster.

With one-click checkout, you won’t need your customers to create an account to buy from you on a regular basis. This alone removes a key source of friction in the checkout experience – a sticking point that more than a quarter (26%) of US consumers have abandoned their carts because of. When you also consider that 18% of US shoppers ditched their carts because of a long or complicated checkout process, the need for a lightning-quick experience is clear.

Plus, there’s the simple fact that a fast checkout flow is good for the customer – who gains back vital seconds, perhaps minutes, of their day – and for you, by increasing the likelihood of that customer following through with their purchase. It’s a win-win!

When is one-click checkout an option for my business?

If your business relies on returning customers to thrive – and the research suggests that two thirds (65%) of businesses do – one-click checkout is a no-brainer.

And Kal Raman, President of Bolt – the leading one-click checkout provider now powering Checkout.com’s merchants – agrees.

“Today’s shopper expects buying to be a breeze everywhere they purchase, and forward-looking retailers know that perfecting the customer experience is no longer a nice to have – it’s simply table stakes.”

But it’s important to remember that not all one-click checkout services are created equal. And that, though one-click checkout appears simple on the surface, there’s so much more going on beneath the tip of that iceberg to make it all happen. You’ll need, for example, to not only save your customers’ debit and credit card information, but do so in a way that’s secure, and – should that data change, due to an updated or replaced card – updates automatically.

Here’s where Checkout.com – and, as of early 2024, Bolt – comes in.

Firstly, your business will benefit from Checkout.com’s brand-new collaboration with Bolt, and the best-in-class one-click checkout solution it’ll give you access to.

Our partnership with Bolt is grounded firmly in our mission to boost our merchants’ conversion performance.

Secondly, you can also take advantage of our real-time account updater service. Through this, we’ll ensure your customers’ saved card data is always up to date – without requiring any manual effort on their, or your, part – to prevent failed payments; and strip even more friction out of the payment experience. This technology also comes in handy for any card-on-file transactions you need to accept: allowing you to automatically process recurring payments, such as monthly memberships or yearly subscriptions, with ease.

Want to know more about how one-click checkout and real-time account updater services can increase conversions? Decrease customer churn? Engender positive customer perceptions about, and loyalty towards, your brand and business?

Get in touch with our team of payment experts here at Checkout.com today for a no-obligation conversation about how our one-click checkout solution can meet your business’s needs.