While shopping through an online store, a customer expects multiple options for making payment, with debit cards and credit cards being the most popular. But since most of the traffic on an e-commerce store is now coming through mobile devices, there is a shift towards mobile-friendly payments.
Among all the payment options, Apple Pay has also become a very opted payment option. Using Apple Pay, the customers don’t have to enter their card or personal details. Most of the Apple Pay owners have used Apple Pay in the last 4 months – a far higher conversion rate than the 50% rate (approx) shown for other wallets.
In this article, we will be knowing all the aspects of Apple Pay, including its benefits and how you can integrate Apple Pay in the Magento store.
Apple Pay Introduction:
Apple Pay was launched in October 2014. It is one of the most popular forms of digital or contactless payment which can be used by the Apple product owners such as iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, Macs, etc. The users can do online shopping with just a tap and can do contactless payments in brick-and-mortar stores, provided that the store has a contactless reader. The merchants can manage their e-commerce store payments easily by adding Apple Pay as a payment option. Popular bank debit cards & credit cards including American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and Union Pay are supportable by Apple Pay.
Do you know there are more than 250 million users of Apple across the world? With that many potential customers globally, why not use Apple Pay to expand your business online?
The devices which support Apple Pay include:
- iPhone 6, 6+, 6S, 6S+
- Apple Watch compatible devices including the iPhone 5
- iPad Air 2 and newer models
- iPad Mini 3 and newer models
You can send and receive money from your kith & kin using Apple Pay. You send and receive funds through Messages, and then they are added to an Apple Cash card. As an online merchant, it is easy to start offering Apple Pay. You just have to contact your payment provider. You tell them you want to accept Apple Pay and they will set it up for you.
Apple gives you the option of downloading the Apple Pay symbol to showcase it on your store and in your register terminal. This makes it easy for you to show your customer that you accept Apple Pay. You don’t have to pay any additional cost to add Apple Pay. Thus, you can accept more forms of payment at no additional cost.
Apple Pay Security:
Security and data privacy is the USP of the multinational IT giant Apple. It uses a multi-layered approach to alleviate merchant fears of security.
a. NFC (Near Field Communication) Technology:
NFC is responsible for the contactless payments in a physical store through Apple Pay with a smartphone & POS terminal. This technology is having a strong presence in the USA, Europe, and some parts of Asia. Most of the latest Apple products come with NFC chips and Touch ID fingerprint identity sensors.
b. Multiple Security Levels (Tokenization):
After storing the data of the credit card in the Passbook iOS software app, the identities of the customers will be verified using the Touch ID sensor. A few beeps, vibrations, or pulses will confirm successful payment.
Apple Pay employs NFC technology to connect with the merchant cash register wirelessly. It generates a security token for authentication purposes. The merchants will never have any data related to customer identity or their credit card number. Thus the customer doesn’t need to be tense about losing their credit card data because they will never possess it in the first place. It is applicable for both online and offline transactions.
Benefits of Integrating Apple Pay in your Magento Store:
After knowing so much about Apple Pay, you must be wondering how Apple Pay can help your business in a direct or indirect manner. There will be numerous benefits for both customers and merchants using Apple Pay.
1. Enhanced Security:
Every year, we come across hundreds of incidents of e-commerce stores getting hacked, and the credit card information of thousands of customers getting stolen. Thus, customers want the safest payment option while making a purchase. But with Magento, you don’t need to worry about your e-commerce store getting hacked and with Apple Pay, your customer credit card data is completely safe. Apple Pay completely encrypts and protects financial transactions data.
Each added credit card is given a DAN (Device Account Number). This DAN is then encoded and stored safely in the Secure Element like a chip in the Apple devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Apple watches.
In simple terms, the actual number of your credit card or debit card will never be shared by Apple, thus minimizing the risk of data theft. Also, every merchant is verified before making a transaction. Whenever a customer clicks on the “Buy with Apple Pay”, then Apple will first check whether you are a valid merchant for making a transaction.
2. Fast & quicker checkouts:
As we mentioned above, using Apple Pay the customer doesn’t need to enter their card details, shipping, billing or payment information. The customer will just click on “Apple Pay” and authorize it with just a fingerprint or face identification. Thus, it becomes one of the fastest and smoothest ways to make a payment on an iPhone.
Also, you don’t need to confuse every customer with the Apple Pay option. It will be displayed to a user who is either using an Apple device or browsing through Safari.
3. Supports greater privacy:
As we mentioned above, Apple doesn’t monitor customer transactions. Also, using the DAN instead of credit card information makes the transaction even more private as merchants don’t get any personal or card details. When a customer uses Apple Pay, information is stored only for troubleshooting, fraud prevention, and regulatory processes.
4. Maximize sales potential:
Last but not the least, by improving the checkout experience you can definitely increase the sales on your e-commerce store. As per a study of Baymard Institute, you can increase sales by 35% through a better checkout experience. Apple Pay is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to make the mobile checkout experience as smooth as possible.
How to integrate Apple Pay as a payment option in your Magento store?
Many popular payment gateways such as Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree, etc. accept the Apple Pay payment option. Also, you can use 3rd party Magento extensions for integrating the Apple Pay payment option. We have given an example of integrating Apple Pay through the Stripe payment gateway:
- Sign up with Stripe Apple Pay for the web
- Install the extension of Stripe in your Magento database
- Log in to the Magento backend admin panel
- Choose Apple Pay from different payment options.
- Connect the extension with Stripe account
- Save the settings.
Now you can accept payments through Apple Pay on your Magento store.
Wrapping Up:
Providing a smooth checkout and secure payment gateway is essential while running an e-commerce store. In this article, we have gone through the importance of Apple Pay, how it is beneficial for your Magento store, and how you can integrate it into your Magento store. At Ceymox Technologies, the best Magento development company in India, we have expertise in implementing such custom features & functionalities and developing e-commerce stores from scratch. Let us know your requirements.
