Apple Pay and BigCommerce

A Match Offering Major Benefits for Both Your Store and Your Customers

BigCommerce is a full-featured and extremely popular eCommerce platform that brings all the infrastructure an eCommerce merchant could need into a single platform. If your store runs on BigCommerce, you also know that it offers a wide variety of checkout options designed to streamline one of the highest-danger points of an online transaction. But cart abandonment is still a big problem, even for BigCommerce stores, and plugging that leak is of prime importance. Apple Pay might just be the best solution to the cart abandonment problem currently available, and, luckily, integrating it with BigCommerce can be handled in a matter of minutes. 

How Apple Pay Supercharges Your BigCommerce Store

The checkout and payment process is arguably one of the most, if not the most crucial steps in your store’s sales process. All the other hard work you’ve done – from creating an attractive, user-friendly design, to writing up great product descriptions, to building a sterling reputation – is moot if the customer abandons their cart and leaves. Yet that’s exactly what happens to three-quarters of all shopping carts, according to OptinMonster. A huge part of that equation is the payment process, and anything you can do to streamline payment will have a major impact on your cart abandonment. Apple Pay doesn’t just streamline your checkout process, it supercharges it, eliminating almost all of the hassle involved in traditional checkout. 

Expedite Checkout to Capture More Sales

In a 2017 study by the Baymard Institute, 37% of respondents said they abandoned their carts because the site wanted them to create an account to checkout. Apple Pay eliminates that problem by giving the shopper the ability to perform an express checkout in as little as a single click and a thumb swipe, without the need to create an account or log in to anything. Express guest checkout is a function all eCommerce websites should be offering regardless, but Apple Pay makes it easier than ever. The user’s name, shipping information, and payment data are all stored in the app and transmitted the second they complete the payment, making Apple Pay the only account they need to worry about, instead of juggling dozens on various sites. 

Offer Your Customers a Better Mobile Experience

In the same study, 28% of people said they abandoned their carts because the checkout process was too long or complicated. For whatever reason, many eCommerce merchants think that the shopping experience ends once a customer places an item into a cart and proceeds to checkout. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Checkout is part of the process, and if you’re not designing your checkout and payment to be as user friendly as the rest of your store, then you’re only going 80% of the distance you need to go.  Apple Pay turns checkout into a simple, two-step process that takes a matter of seconds rather than minutes, and requires the user to enter essentially no information manually. That helps create a better shopping experience that is truly end-to-end, versus one that’s only smooth until checkout. 

Offer Unparalleled Security and Minimize Fraud

19% of respondents said that they abandoned their carts because they didn’t trust the site with their payment information. That might come as a surprise, but even in today’s almost totally digitized world, a lot of people still have trust issues when it comes to e-commerce. Anything you can do to assuage that concern will pay major dividends, and Apple Pay is of the best ways to instill confidence in your shoppers. Because Apple Pay requires the user to swipe their thumb or quickly verify their face on their device prior to purchase, the opportunities for fraudulent transactions go way, way down. Apple Pay also eliminates the need for shoppers to manually enter their credit card information, which removes one of the psychological barriers involved in cart abandonment – the perception of the actual transfer of sensitive payment data.  That additional security doesn’t just benefit your customers either, it also helps keep fraud and chargebacks at bay – a key process in ensuring you stay on the good side of your payment processor and the card companies. 

Integrating Apple Pay with Your BigCommerce Store

BigCommerce has gone out of its way to make integration of Apple Pay as easy as possible, but there are still some rules merchants need to follow and some technical requirements that have to be met to utilize the system. Luckily, meeting those requirements is not a daunting process, and there is really no reason that all BigCommerce merchants shouldn’t be accepting Apple Pay. 

“One-Click” Activation

BigCommerce has made Apple Pay integration a “one-click” proposition. All you need to do is navigate to the digital wallets section of your BigCommerce store’s payments dashboard, and click the “set up” button beside Apple Pay. BigCommerce will then ask you to agree to the Apple Pay TOS, and your store will be ready to begin accepting payments. It may not technically be one click, but it doesn’t get much easier! 

Apple Pay Guidelines

To accept Apple Pay, your BigCommerce store will need to meet Apple’s Acceptable Use Guidelines for Apple on the Web.  These guidelines are straightforward and mostly cover prohibited uses, like selling tobacco products, firearms, counterfeit goods, etc. They also cover things like IP protection, Apple brand protection, API use, and more. It’s a short document, but it’s a good idea to ensure your store doesn’t come into conflict with any of the guidelines before enabling Apple Pay.

Technical Requirements

Your store must also meet some basic technical requirements, most of which revolve around payment gateways and security. To use Apple Pay, you’ll need a compatible payment gateway. Currently, your BigCommerce store will need to use Authorize.Net, Stripe, or PayPal by Braintree. You’ll also need to be in a supported country and have a supported payment processor, like BAMS, TSYS, WorldPay, Fiserv, or Elavon.  Your entire store will also need SSL SHA-2 encryption. If you’re on BigCommerce’s shared SSL, you’re good to go right out of the box. If you have a dedicated SSL certificate, you’ll need to make sure you’re using SHA-2. Finally, if you have ReCaptcha enabled on your checkout, it’ll need to be turned off for Apple Pay to work. 

Assuming you meet all of the necessary technical requirements and the terms outlined in the acceptable use guidelines, accepting Apple Pay on your BigCommerce store couldn’t be easier. If you’re unsure or need help getting set up with a compatible gateway or any other technical problem, the BAMS support team is here to help our merchants ensure their Apple Pay integrations are optimized and helping drive up conversions. Get in touch with a member of the team and get your 5 step price comparison.