American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa have gone live with an online checkout service that lets merchants add a single buy button to their sites to accept payments from any of the networks’ cardholders — without them first needing to create an account with the merchant or enter detailed payment data.

The new ‘click to pay’ service is based on the EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) standard.

“The new interoperable checkout aims to make the digital payment experience as secure and simple as possible for everyone involved, and increase choice for all stakeholders,” the payments networks say.

“This standards-based approach allows consumers to make purchases without having to create or log into an account.

“The idea behind this is to mirror the one, consistent checkout experience that exists in physical stores — with one terminal and one way to pay irrespective of the retailer.

“The vision for the future of digital commerce is that the new button will replace the current guest checkout process.

“For merchants, that means a more efficient checkout solution that will help reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and a way to offer multiple card brands for digital checkout in one seamless integration.

“For consumers, this means greater consistency and fewer steps at checkout, regardless of their payment choice, and the elimination of laborious key entry of personal account numbers and information.”

“The initial focus will be on converting existing Masterpass and Visa Checkout merchants to click to pay,” they add.

“Consumers can now click to pay at select merchants in the US this month, leading up to wide availability in early 2020.”

“Cinemark, Movember and Rakuten are the first merchants to adopt click to pay on their websites, with BassPro, JoAnn Fabric and Crafts, Papa John’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Shop.com, Staples and Tickets.com following by the end of 2019.”

Next: Visit the NFCW Expo to find new suppliers and solutions