Visa Checkout heads to Walmart, Starbucks
Payments giant Visa has inked a handful of high-profile merchant partnerships to bolster its PayPal OneTouch competitor Visa Checkout.
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The company announced Tuesday that Walmart.com, Starbucks, Walgreens and HSN will begin supporting Visa Checkout this year. The service is currently deployed at retailers including Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Gap and fast food chain Taco Bell.
Visa Checkout enables users to sign in with a single username and password to complete a payment process, without needing to leave a merchant's website or app. From there, the payment information is encrypted, stored and shared between online stores that are supported by the platform.
The payments giant launched Visa Checkout in July 2014 as a replacement for its V.Me platform. Visa said the service is now "among the fastest and most successful Visa consumer product launches in company history".
The company says Visa Checkout has more than 10 million consumer accounts in more than 16 countries -- up from 6 million consumer accounts Visa reported in August.
Still, even with its impressive growth Visa Checkout lags way behind PayPal's 173 million active user accounts. Granted, not all PayPal users have opted in for One Touch or PayPal Express, but they are at least in the ecosystem.
But what Visa Checkout lacks in user numbers is made up for in conversion rates. According to Visa data compiled by the retail analytics firm ComScore, online shoppers using Visa Checkout are 23 percent more likely to complete their purchases (as opposed to filling an online basket and later abandoning it) than those using PayPal Express Checkout.