PayPal Introduces ‘PayPal Mobile Payments Standard’ and ‘Mobile Commerce in a Box’ Solutions for Singapore Businesses

According to statistics released from PayPal Online and Mobile Shopping Insights 2011, mobile shopping here in Singapore is expected to increase from S$328 million (US$259 million) in 2011 to a whopping S$3.1 billion (US$2.4 billion) in 2015. And with nearby half of all online shoppers making a purchase on their smartphone devices while on-the-go, businesses ought to start looking at how they should adapt to such shopping behaviours.

Today PayPal officially released two solutions in Singapore: “PayPal Mobile Payments Standard” and “Mobile Commerce in a Box,” to help Singapore businesses increase their mobile conversions and sales, as well as engage mobile shoppers.

In a press conference today, Rahul Shingal, director of PayPal Mobile Asia Pacific said,

PayPal is aggressively driving this change by streamlining the payment process in as little as two clicks on web-enabled mobile devices for millions of consumers and businesses across the world. The time is right for Singapore’s retail industry to go multichannel by offering mobile-optimized checkout and mobile shopping websites to take advantage of this major change in consumer shopping behavior.

In a nutshell, both solutions aim to streamline mobile shoppers’ experience. “PayPal Mobile Payments Standard” solution automatically provides all merchants accepting PayPal on their websites with a mobile payment checkout experience optimized for mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android. PayPal intelligently detects when users are making payments from their mobile devices, and seamlessly redirects them to a mobile-optimized payment page, even when the website is not optimized for mobile devices yet. So, if you own a e-commerce site which is currently using PayPal, this mobile optimized payment checkout is already available without additional integration. As for merchants who’d like customers to enjoy such transactions, all you need to do is to integrate PayPal into your site and ta-dah, customers can complete their payment in just two clicks.

But we also need to bear in mind that while a better checkout experience translates into increased mobile sales, it is essential for businesses to offer a mobile-optimized website to compete in the e-commerce marketplace today. So PayPal is offering “Mobile Commerce in a Box,” which aims to help businesses present a mobile shopfront, enhancing the entire shopping experience. PayPal claims to be able to do it within an hour there will be no additional costs incurred for businesses. So now, the mobile shopfront will have larger product photos, buttons, links, and text to make it easy to shop while on-the-go, on top of being able to make payments in just two clicks. That certainly sounds exciting, especially for folks who love shopping on-the-go, like myself.

The two solutions are an effort to retain two-thirds of Singaporean mobile shoppers stopping a mobile transaction due to hassle of keying in financial details on a small screen, and help three out of four Singaporean businesses without mobile friendly websites to increase their reach of mobile shoppers.

With these two solutions, PayPal is hoping that businesses will benefit from lower bounce rates, increased browsing timings, higher conversion rates, and eventually an increase in mobile sales. For those e-commerce owners who are looking to use this mobile commerce solution, PayPal merchants using ZenCart or osCommerce shopping carts can download, install, and use the free PayPal Mobile Store Plugin which will convert existing online stores into a fully optimized mobile shopfront.