After over a year of questions and rumors, Google finally unrolled its entry into the online payment processing space: Google Checkout. A lot of folks were expecting something directly comparable to PayPal, but Google Checkout is a slightly different animal. It's not much to look at directly, for example, because most of the work comes into play when visiting merchant sites that use the system.
As an online shopper, it offers yet another centralized payment handling system, like Paypal in that respect. But a lot of the interest will come from sellers looking for a simpler and more affordable alternative to PayPal to collect money from shoppers. If you, as a seller, use Google's AdWords contextual advertising system, your payments could be processed for free (depending on how much you spend on Google ads, and how much you sell). And even if you don't do the AdWords thing, Google's base take is a very reasonable 2 percent plus $0.20 per transaction.
There's a whole heap of online retailers already accepting Google Checkout payments, and this is before the official rollout (and for once, it's not labeled 'beta'). Since Google Checkout will defnitely appeal to smaller sellers, I expect seeing a "Google Checkout" icon and option in a website's payment screen will someday be almost as common as a Visa logo.
Here's an early hands-on review.
By the way, as the review notes, as part of the rollout, some participating merchants are offering coupons for Google Checkout users. For example, you can go to CD Universe, and get $10 off an order of $20 or more with the Google Checkout code.
As an online shopper, it offers yet another centralized payment handling system, like Paypal in that respect. But a lot of the interest will come from sellers looking for a simpler and more affordable alternative to PayPal to collect money from shoppers. If you, as a seller, use Google's AdWords contextual advertising system, your payments could be processed for free (depending on how much you spend on Google ads, and how much you sell). And even if you don't do the AdWords thing, Google's base take is a very reasonable 2 percent plus $0.20 per transaction.
There's a whole heap of online retailers already accepting Google Checkout payments, and this is before the official rollout (and for once, it's not labeled 'beta'). Since Google Checkout will defnitely appeal to smaller sellers, I expect seeing a "Google Checkout" icon and option in a website's payment screen will someday be almost as common as a Visa logo.
Here's an early hands-on review.
By the way, as the review notes, as part of the rollout, some participating merchants are offering coupons for Google Checkout users. For example, you can go to CD Universe, and get $10 off an order of $20 or more with the Google Checkout code.
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