After literally years of rumors, Google has launched its much-talked-about e-commerce payment system,
Google Checkout. The idea is simple: Google holds on to your credit card and shipping information, and when you find something you want to buy at a Google Checkout affiliate, completing the transaction is a one-step process. "The goal here is to make it be one nanosecond from the time the customer decides to buy to the time the transaction is complete and the product is on the way," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the
New York Times' coverage of the launch. Google has a trick up its sleeve for luring in merchants, too: If you're a merchant who buys advertising from Google
AdSense AdWords, Google will waive some or all of your Checkout transaction fees. But for those who don't enroll in AdSense, the fees are still comparatively low: 20 cents per transaction plus two percent of the purchase price.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-29-2006 @ 5:44PM
wrecker said...
Its not AdSense -> Adsense is for Webmasters. Google checkout has incentives for merchants who spend on advertising with AdWords.
Reply
6-29-2006 @ 6:51PM
Adam Ballai said...
The API was developed very in depth with tax, shipping, and item storage. I believe this is an excellent way to do informational analytics on many levels of the consumer.
Reply
6-30-2006 @ 8:41AM
Gil said...
http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=42871
Just when I thought this was going to be different from PayPal's policy. Google is loosing a lot of bussiness like this
Reply
6-30-2006 @ 9:45AM
Hitesh Sawlani said...
2% of the item? That is how much banks charge in Spain for processing credit cards.
SO
imagine the cost of an item (to the seller) is 16euros, he puts a 25% markup...
So he sells at 20euros
by selling once:
40cents goes to the bank for using a credit card(2%)
40cents goes to google (2%)
20cents goes to google (always...)
--------
1euro goes away
Profit goes from 4euros to 3euros... that is too much
Reply
6-30-2006 @ 12:42PM
Jordan Running said...
Hitesh: Google does the credit card processing--the merchant does not pay any additional money to the bank, and as I wrote above, its fees are fairly competetive.
Reply