Google’s Checkout: All Set to Revolutionize Online Payment System
Google recently launched Checkout, an online payment system, which it says will revolutionize online shopping and payment. So how does Checkout work?
Its very simple to use system, just search for the item you want to buy with Google, if the seller accepts Checkout as a payment method it will have a small shopping cart with “Google Checkout” written icon. Select the items to buy and add them to the shopping cart. When you are ready to pay, just click the Google Checkout button, if you have a Checkout account just sign in to the account and pay. Otherwise sign up for the account and pay. So when you shop in stores which accept Checkout, you will be able to same the same account. This makes it easy to keep track of your online spending and also check status of your orders. No more having to remember all different sign in name and password for different online stores. It is this ease of have one sign in name and one password that Google hope will attract many customers into using Checkout.
Other benefit of Checkout is its robust security set-up. The seller does not know your credit card number and you can choose to keep your email address confidential too. When you sign up for Checkout you will have to select preferred method of payment, like credit card or debit card and enter their number. Then when you use Checkout for payment, the transaction is processed without the seller getting your credit or debit card number. To protect the sellers, Google has anti-fraud system which checks for fradulant credit card numbers and fake purchases.
Checkout is managed to spread among fair number of online stores in a short time. Some of stores accepting CheckOut as a payment method are: Dick’s Sporting Goods, Buy.com, Starbucks, Zales and Ritz Camera. Google has also managed to introduce a special feature to lure Citi credit card members. If you register you Citi credit card with CheckOut, you will get “$5 or 5 Dividend Dollars or 1000 ThankYou Points the first time you use Google Checkout”, according to Google.
With its impressive growth within a short time of its launch, Checkout managed to send shock waves to its rival PayPal’s parent company EBay. In an effort not lose out to Google, EBay decided that it will not accept Checkout as a method of payment its widely popular auction site. In official statements Ebay has denied that the step to “ban” Checkout was a retaliatory, the business community believes that battle lines have been drawn between Google and Ebay.
If you are interested in signing up for Checkout or want to learn more, please visit the following link, http://checkout.google.com/. There is a tutorial on using Checkout at: http://checkout.google.com/seller/GoogleCheckoutOverview.pdf and resources for sellers who would like to use Checkout in their websites are at: http://checkout.google.com/seller/start.html.
Source:
http://checkout.google.com
