Google Checkout - the Juggernaut rumbles on
You know Google Checkout has to be pretty good. Why else would eBay so strive so hard to prohibit eBay sellers from accepting it as a means of payment?
What I didn't realise is how good Google Checkout is. From my point of view, the most important thing about shopping cart payment system has to be its convenience. My own requirements are very simple - I just want to give users a way of using their credit card online to pay me a hundred pounds to cover the cost of my processing their application to become a tenant.
I used to use NoChex, but they are a complete waste of space. As soon as you get anything working they shut it down on the grounds of requiring mounds of paper to verify your identity. As soon as that is completed they demand you upgrade to a premium account before you can receive electronic payments. It is quite clear that if they had any confidence in their own system they'd make it as easy as possible to use and simply collect a small percentage of each transaction as a fee. Since they don't do that it's quite clear that they don't regard their own system as having any staying power against the competition from PayPal etc.
Anyway, back to Google Checkout. The first big, pleasant surprise is that it is part of Google Accounts. So the same account I use to get my email works for my taking money, for my small company, through the web. The sign-up was therefore completely painless. This alone makes it vastly better than all the rest of the competition. Note that although eBay own PayPal, you still have to separately enter all your details. Recognising a person as an entity, distinct from all separate customer roles he plays is something that bankassurance companies have been trying to for decades. I would be surprised if they manage it before they are taken over by Google.
The rest of it is fantastically easy. To put a buy-now button to buy a fixed-price service took a matter of seconds. Take a look at my handiwork, aided by the script generated by Google. I don't pretend that this is the finest shopping card system you've ever seen, but it might be the quickest-produced!!
What I didn't realise is how good Google Checkout is. From my point of view, the most important thing about shopping cart payment system has to be its convenience. My own requirements are very simple - I just want to give users a way of using their credit card online to pay me a hundred pounds to cover the cost of my processing their application to become a tenant.
I used to use NoChex, but they are a complete waste of space. As soon as you get anything working they shut it down on the grounds of requiring mounds of paper to verify your identity. As soon as that is completed they demand you upgrade to a premium account before you can receive electronic payments. It is quite clear that if they had any confidence in their own system they'd make it as easy as possible to use and simply collect a small percentage of each transaction as a fee. Since they don't do that it's quite clear that they don't regard their own system as having any staying power against the competition from PayPal etc.
Anyway, back to Google Checkout. The first big, pleasant surprise is that it is part of Google Accounts. So the same account I use to get my email works for my taking money, for my small company, through the web. The sign-up was therefore completely painless. This alone makes it vastly better than all the rest of the competition. Note that although eBay own PayPal, you still have to separately enter all your details. Recognising a person as an entity, distinct from all separate customer roles he plays is something that bankassurance companies have been trying to for decades. I would be surprised if they manage it before they are taken over by Google.
The rest of it is fantastically easy. To put a buy-now button to buy a fixed-price service took a matter of seconds. Take a look at my handiwork, aided by the script generated by Google. I don't pretend that this is the finest shopping card system you've ever seen, but it might be the quickest-produced!!