PayPal Brings its Smart Buttons System to a Global Stage

Remember when Staples first rolled out the “Easy Button”? It was a great idea; the notion that people could smooth out the rough spots in life just by slapping one comically-oversized novelty button was hilarious and at the same time kind of sad for being pure fiction. It was a notion that PayPal would take at least a subconscious cue from with its introduction of the Smart Button, and now, this system is about to take on a much wider market: the world.

PayPal introduced the Smart Button almost three months ago, and only in the United States. Now, it’s about to go global, and bring its time-saving payments concept with it. Basically, the Smart Button was a refinement of PayPal’s earlier Buy Button, which ultimately gives not only customers but also retailers more options in terms of tailoring the checkout experience according to a customer’s preferences.

The global version of Smart Buttons will do much the same thing, taking several basic PayPal-branded options—PayPal proper, PayPal Credit, and of course Venmo—but also offering some region-specific options like MyBank in Italy or iDeal in the Netherlands. It’s a way to offer customers a wide range of options without having to plaster a bunch of logos all over a checkout screen, a process some call “Nascarization.”

Better yet, with PayPal Credit becoming an option in more places, customers can get access to financing options where some didn’t exist previously, and that’s a result businesses can get behind.

Since around $236 billion annually is lost due to excessive friction at the checkout point, according to word from PYMNTS’ Checkout Conversion Index, it’s easy to see why retailers would want smoother options, and why PayPal is looking to step up and provide same. Reducing that amount even by a trivial percentage would represent multi-billion dollar savings, and the company that would be responsible for such savings would see its bottom line swell accordingly.

Only time will tell how well the Smart Buttons system works when it goes into its widest release, but it’s a safe bet that businesses eager to get some of that lost cash back in their coffers will be only too happy to bring PayPal’s new mobile payments-related tool into play.