Stripe Adds New Benefit to Checkout System

Stripe's Checkout may have gotten its start a year ago, but the company has been hard at work to bring new developments to this platform ever since. Stripe's goal, at last report, was to make Checkout a smooth and easy system to work with, and create what it describes as “best possible payments flow.” While it certainly did quite a job with that previously, its ongoing development has produced some exciting new features that should prove welcome as well, and the new Checkout is set to be even better than its predecessor.

There are several new features involved in the newest version of Checkout, and the company even offers up a complete showcase that allows users to check out the user interface. The newest features include an expansion for address support, better device optimization systems, and a “remember me” option that allows customers to have a secure identifier to return for later shopping. Each of these features contains several points in its own right, and the whole system as a result has quite a bit going for it now.

The expanded address support, first off, will allow for the separation of billing and shipping addresses, a common feature on many e-commerce sites, and one regularly requested of Checkout. Users providing addresses also got a bit of streamlining; now users can fill in several fields just by entering a ZIP code. There's even automated verification tools; should the user mistype something into a field, said user is automatically told about the mistyping for easy correction.

With the improvements in device optimization, meanwhile, users now will have a better overall experience on several different types of devices. Stripe has smoothed out the experience for several different devices, from desktop to tablet and on mobile devices in Android (News - Alert), iOS and Windows flavors.

The “remember me” function has itself brought along some extra value, allowing users to get a faster checkout when returning to shop, and the results on early testing with this point were particularly telling. Customers with saved details were actually several times less likely to abandon a purchase than those who didn't have details saved, and that's a point that has significant bottom-line ramifications.

Indeed, the entire Checkout system could have major bottom-line ramifications for businesses offering goods and services online. The less likely the customer is to abandon a purchase, the better, and that means better turnaround, better sales, and all things equal, better overall profitability. In an economy that's still, overall, fragile in nature, anything a business can do to make shopping easier on the potential customer is likely to improve sales significantly. Easier checkout, reduced prices, coupons for later, product guarantees...these things can add up to tip the value scale in the customer's direction and make that customer more likely to part with cash, which is just what a business needs to stay viable.

While Stripe's Checkout may not be a silver bullet solution for every company, chances are the use of such tools will prove valuable in the long run and leave companies more likely to make those all too vital sales.