GBuy?… Google Checkout?… the answer to e-commerce?
July 8, 2006 – 8:25 am
I’ve just been looking into this new piece of payment technology lately. Is there anything that Google cannot do, or will not do? After their answers to advertising and earning advertising revenue I am sure that a few people thought “What’s next?” Apparently, Google Checkout is!
As the Google Checkout site states “For every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free. For sales that exceed this amount or if you don’t use AdWords, you can process them at a low 2% and $0.20 per transaction.” I think I may have to check this out simply to see if the hype is true on that point alone.
In Google Checkout’s Developer’s Center, you are given 3 options for development with GBuy, Buy Now Buttons (Simple and quick way to add payment features), e-commerce partners (This is for shopping cart systems like MonsterCommerce and others), and Google Checkout API (The “Meat and Potatoes” of Google’s Checkout system that allows to develop into your custom system).
Naturally when a new system like Google Checkout is released people try to find fault with it, it only makes sense. My concern is the transfer of funds from your Google Checkout account to your banking account and how successful or unsuccessful this may be. Because the system is still young and technically in its infancy how reliable is it? And also, will they have bad customer service for customers using it? Furthermore, will they ‘freeze’ or ‘lockout’ customers out of their customers accounts because they suspect fraud on perfectly non-fraudulent transactions, as PayPal seems to do from time to time?
I think that a war is going to be brewing between PayPal and Google simply because Google is a very trusted name in all things internet and PayPal isn’t about ready to lose face in the eye’s of their customers. For all we know it could be good for business with lower transaction fees and better customer service. Dare to Dream! That’s just my opinion, of course 