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The idea is that a central 1-click checkout provider will store your payment information, shipping address, and other details after the first time you use a sit

The idea is that a central 1-click checkout provider will store your payment information, shipping address, and other details after the first time you use a site with their checkout. The next time you checkout on any website that uses the same 1-click checkout provider, they already have your information for “1-click” checkout. The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winner-take-all market where every shop wants to use the 1-click provider with the largest customer base. This is the magical “network effect” that investors want to see. If it works and becomes ubiquitous, the network effects would be massive. So far, none of the providers have managed to get much traffic at all. The common theme is that integrating 1-click checkout into everyone’s different web store has been a much bigger engineering challenge than they expected. They’re burning cash at shocking rates to do all of these custom integrations but not getting enough return on investment. It’s also entirely unclear why Shopify or Stripe or another provider wouldn’t just step in and use their scale to make this happen themselves. I kind of suspect few people actually want 1-click checkout to begin with.

koreth1 4y ago
> The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winner-take-all market where every shop wants to use the 1-click provider with the largest customer base. Not saying you're wrong about that being the thesis, but the thesis makes no sense to me. It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or selection. The target market this investment thesis depends on is people who say, "I found a site with just the thing I wanted, but to buy it, I would have to enter my payment information! Guess it's back to Google to see if someone else has it at a similar price, and if not, I just won't buy it at all." Because the moment you give in and enter your payment and shipping details into a second checkout provider, that provider becomes just as convenient for future purchases as your first one.
- kadoban 4y ago
  I've definitely bailed on purchases before due to the purchase flow being too annoying, and either found another site or gave up. Usually this is due to having to type in all my data just to figure out what shipping options are, but I'm quite sure every step you make people do to check out results in x% fewer sales.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I wonder how much of this is driven by misunderstanding the analytics? “We have a huge drop-off rate in our checkout flow! Customers have intent to buy and they’re somehow getting blocked in checkout; we need a smoother/faster checkout…” No dumbass, you need to need to not charge $15 shipping on a product where you’re only $5 cheaper than your free shipping competitor.
- twblalock 4y ago
  > It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or selection. If I'm shopping for something and multiple sites offer it for the same price, which happens pretty often for many categories of products, I prefer the vendor with the easiest checkout experience and/or the fastest shipping.
- 2143 4y ago
  It's just, people like me simply don't want to enter their payment information to an additional thing.
- rtpg 4y ago
  The "makes sense" idea is for low effort purchases. Simple example is itch.io. Games on there are a couple of bucks. I have my payment information saved. People link a game to me, and I'll maybe impulse buy cuz I don't have to deal with making an account or setting up payment info. It's silly, but I think it works in a certain sweet spot! But honestly I think the bigger thing than payment details is actual account creation. I'll go over to Amazon to buy a thing just to not deal with some product's bespoke checkout page, unless I really want to support the product's creator.
- tjs8rj 4y ago
  I think the network effects are on the vendor side. As a vendor you integrate with the one-click checkout company that has the largest user base, because that'll have the most coverage for your customers.
- kleinsch 4y ago
  Yea, your thesis makes no sense. Refining that thesis into what Bolt/Fast/etc actually believe: - Conversion rates on the checkout page will be higher when user info is prefilled bc of less friction - This means conversion rates will be highest for the one click checkout product with the largest market share - This will lead to merchants choosing the one click checkout product with the largest market share, bc they want the best conversion rates - This leads to VCs lighting money on fire trying to capture the market, since largest user network will be the main objective This is assuming, of course, that checkout page UX and optimization is something all these companies will be able to do so it'll be a level playing field there. Given how much research and experimentation has gone into optimizing checkout pages, if these players all have buckets of VC money, that seems safe to me.
aabhay 4y ago
PayPal has had this for a very, very long time. I use it all the time, and it works great. So what am I missing? I also have Apple Pay enabled. It works great as well. The use of hardware verification vs a browser redirect gives it some nice advantages. So what exactly is the differentiated experience I’m getting with Bolt?
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  PayPay has pretty terrible UX IMO
  - tomschwiha 4y ago
    And a not as smooth DX as Stripe.
- travellingprog 4y ago
  My personal experience for the last couple of years is that the "checkout with Paypal" option on most sites is buggy now. After the Paypal portion of the payment flow, the redirect back to the original site fails. The redirected page will either show me an error message or I'll be somehow redirected to the website's root page. I've stopped using the Paypal option even though I really want to use it, because it makes me uncomfortable providing my credit card information to so many sites. Not sure what's changed, it used to work quite well. My guess is either there's a bug on PayPal's side with my account, or the PayPal integration has gotten more complicated and many websites have not kept up with certain changes.
deanCommie 4y ago
> I kind of suspect few people actually want 1-click checkout to begin with. This. I trust Amazon almost implicitly. I know that they have all my information, and that I use the same shipping and payment method every single time. There should be no reason for 1-click checkout to not work perfectly every time. And even there, I don't use it. I dunno. Is it really that much more effort to look at one more screen and get the feeling of security that the item is going to the right place and will get there on a day that makes sense? If Amazon can't get me to use 1-click, No other merchant/retailer has any hope whatsoever. It works for digital items (iTunes, Kindle) because the delivery is "to me, in the UX i'm using right now", not a physical item that has to come to an address.
- sgustard 4y ago
  I've ordered things from not-Amazon and had them arrive weeks late, or they ship the wrong or damaged items, or returns are a hassle, etc. One-click checkout is not the solution to any of that.
DantesKite 4y ago
I really enjoyed this explanation.
jrockway 4y ago
That's interesting. I feel like the way to really get this business off the ground would be for someone like 1password or Chrome to replace the credit card number they store with one they own, and then when you use it to fill in a form with your credit card information, the merchant charges them and they charge you a 1% service fee or something. Overnight, you are taking 1% of all Internet shopping revenue. The ethics are, of course, terrible. I made myself a little sad just writing this!
RektBoy 4y ago
Who wants to use 1-click checkout anyway? Souns like 1-click to say byebye to all of your money.
bjohnson225 4y ago
It would be very interesting to see the conversion rates of Bolt and Stripe. Considering we have Apple/Google Pay, Paypal, Klarna, and card details being stored in a browser the advantages offered by Bolt seem minimal at best. It's also hard to imagine moving from a situation where a payment passes through one service (Stripe) to two services (Bolt and Stripe) being particularly cost effective for the merchant. I also imagine more than a few shoppers would be freaked out by seeing their card details stored on a site they've never used.

koreth1 4y ago

> The investment thesis is that if 1-click checkout were to take off, it would become a winner-take-all market where every shop wants to use the 1-click provider with the largest customer base. Not saying you're wrong about that being the thesis, but the thesis makes no sense to me. It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or selection. The target market this investment thesis depends on is people who say, "I found a site with just the thing I wanted, but to buy it, I would have to enter my payment information! Guess it's back to Google to see if someone else has it at a similar price, and if not, I just won't buy it at all." Because the moment you give in and enter your payment and shipping details into a second checkout provider, that provider becomes just as convenient for future purchases as your first one.

kadoban 4y ago
I've definitely bailed on purchases before due to the purchase flow being too annoying, and either found another site or gave up. Usually this is due to having to type in all my data just to figure out what shipping options are, but I'm quite sure every step you make people do to check out results in x% fewer sales.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I wonder how much of this is driven by misunderstanding the analytics? “We have a huge drop-off rate in our checkout flow! Customers have intent to buy and they’re somehow getting blocked in checkout; we need a smoother/faster checkout…” No dumbass, you need to need to not charge $15 shipping on a product where you’re only $5 cheaper than your free shipping competitor.
twblalock 4y ago
> It assumes that consumers are selecting shopping sites based on which payment service the sites use rather than on, say, price or selection. If I'm shopping for something and multiple sites offer it for the same price, which happens pretty often for many categories of products, I prefer the vendor with the easiest checkout experience and/or the fastest shipping.
2143 4y ago
It's just, people like me simply don't want to enter their payment information to an additional thing.
rtpg 4y ago
The "makes sense" idea is for low effort purchases. Simple example is itch.io. Games on there are a couple of bucks. I have my payment information saved. People link a game to me, and I'll maybe impulse buy cuz I don't have to deal with making an account or setting up payment info. It's silly, but I think it works in a certain sweet spot! But honestly I think the bigger thing than payment details is actual account creation. I'll go over to Amazon to buy a thing just to not deal with some product's bespoke checkout page, unless I really want to support the product's creator.
tjs8rj 4y ago
I think the network effects are on the vendor side. As a vendor you integrate with the one-click checkout company that has the largest user base, because that'll have the most coverage for your customers.
kleinsch 4y ago
Yea, your thesis makes no sense. Refining that thesis into what Bolt/Fast/etc actually believe: - Conversion rates on the checkout page will be higher when user info is prefilled bc of less friction - This means conversion rates will be highest for the one click checkout product with the largest market share - This will lead to merchants choosing the one click checkout product with the largest market share, bc they want the best conversion rates - This leads to VCs lighting money on fire trying to capture the market, since largest user network will be the main objective This is assuming, of course, that checkout page UX and optimization is something all these companies will be able to do so it'll be a level playing field there. Given how much research and experimentation has gone into optimizing checkout pages, if these players all have buckets of VC money, that seems safe to me.

aabhay 4y ago

PayPal has had this for a very, very long time. I use it all the time, and it works great. So what am I missing? I also have Apple Pay enabled. It works great as well. The use of hardware verification vs a browser redirect gives it some nice advantages. So what exactly is the differentiated experience I’m getting with Bolt?

shepherdjerred 4y ago
PayPay has pretty terrible UX IMO
- tomschwiha 4y ago
  And a not as smooth DX as Stripe.
travellingprog 4y ago
My personal experience for the last couple of years is that the "checkout with Paypal" option on most sites is buggy now. After the Paypal portion of the payment flow, the redirect back to the original site fails. The redirected page will either show me an error message or I'll be somehow redirected to the website's root page. I've stopped using the Paypal option even though I really want to use it, because it makes me uncomfortable providing my credit card information to so many sites. Not sure what's changed, it used to work quite well. My guess is either there's a bug on PayPal's side with my account, or the PayPal integration has gotten more complicated and many websites have not kept up with certain changes.

deanCommie 4y ago

> I kind of suspect few people actually want 1-click checkout to begin with. This. I trust Amazon almost implicitly. I know that they have all my information, and that I use the same shipping and payment method every single time. There should be no reason for 1-click checkout to not work perfectly every time. And even there, I don't use it. I dunno. Is it really that much more effort to look at one more screen and get the feeling of security that the item is going to the right place and will get there on a day that makes sense? If Amazon can't get me to use 1-click, No other merchant/retailer has any hope whatsoever. It works for digital items (iTunes, Kindle) because the delivery is "to me, in the UX i'm using right now", not a physical item that has to come to an address.

sgustard 4y ago
I've ordered things from not-Amazon and had them arrive weeks late, or they ship the wrong or damaged items, or returns are a hassle, etc. One-click checkout is not the solution to any of that.

DantesKite 4y ago

I really enjoyed this explanation.

jrockway 4y ago

That's interesting. I feel like the way to really get this business off the ground would be for someone like 1password or Chrome to replace the credit card number they store with one they own, and then when you use it to fill in a form with your credit card information, the merchant charges them and they charge you a 1% service fee or something. Overnight, you are taking 1% of all Internet shopping revenue. The ethics are, of course, terrible. I made myself a little sad just writing this!

RektBoy 4y ago

Who wants to use 1-click checkout anyway? Souns like 1-click to say byebye to all of your money.

bjohnson225 4y ago

It would be very interesting to see the conversion rates of Bolt and Stripe. Considering we have Apple/Google Pay, Paypal, Klarna, and card details being stored in a browser the advantages offered by Bolt seem minimal at best. It's also hard to imagine moving from a situation where a payment passes through one service (Stripe) to two services (Bolt and Stripe) being particularly cost effective for the merchant. I also imagine more than a few shoppers would be freaked out by seeing their card details stored on a site they've never used.