The goal of seamless m-commerce between apps is stuck on several factors, but one key hurdle is payments.
Startup Button is looking at ways to fix this problem.
With $20 million in new funding from Norwest Venture Partners, New York-based Button — which connects the mobile apps of commerce brands such as Uber, Jet, Groupon, and Stubhub to the apps of other companies searching for a revenue boost — is planning on adding payments to its linking functionality.
“Once you’ve built out this connected tissue, the question is what do you do next?” said Mike Dudas, co-founder and chief revenue officer for Button and formerly of Braintree, Venmo, PayPal, and Google. “There’s a lot we could do, [such as] facilitated payments — instead of having a user go from App A to App B to transact.”
The company is in the beginning stages of adding this capability (though we’re guessing with Dudas’s background, payments are a likely feature for Button. After all, Button already partners with the likes of Uber and Jet, which process vasts amount of transactions on daily basis.)
Eliminating purchase friction in mobile is harder than it sounds. The average industry conversion rate for consumers who have to switch from mobile to another interface point, like a desktop, is lower than 50% — which is why there is an effort to add mobile payments.
“Despite the fact that people are spending more than 50% more of their time on mobile, the revenue is not the same [as on desktop], not even close,” said Dudas. “Those companies in aggregate, outside of the bigger companies [like Google], the revenue is actually dropping on mobile.”
According to Dudas, Button will be using its new funding for “people and geography.”
The real trick for Button would be eliminating the friction of that first mobile purchase, when a consumer has to input all of their data and payment details for the first time. Eliminating that friction across the whole of mobile would necessitate keeping user data safe and secure across an open forum — no easy feat, to be sure.
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