TechCrunch
Facebook Partners With PayPal, Stripe, Braintree To Autofill Billing Info In Mobile Commerce Apps
Facebook wants to put an end to typing billing details on the small screen, help developers and payment processors earn more money, and prove that its app install ads make money for ecommerce companies. So today it’s rolling out last month’s test of “Autofill With Facebook” in partnership with PayPal, Stripe, and Braintree to two ecommerce apps, JackThreads and Mosaic, with more to come.
It’s important to understand this feature is partnership with payment providers and is additive, not necessarily competitive, at least for now. One day Facebook could try to conquer more of the payments flow by processing payments itself. But currently, if a developer uses PayPal, Autofill With Facebook layers on top of it, and PayPal still earns its processing fee. These three partners could become two shortly as we’ve reported that PayPal may be close to buying Braintree.
We’ll have a demo of Autofill With Facebook here in a moment. The “early test” feature as Facebook calls it will appear in the Mosaic (photo book-buying) and JackThreads (hip clothing) iOS apps for some users starting today and everyone who has payment info stored on Facebook by the end the week. You can add your payment info to Facebook by hand here.
Previously this test was only available in early beta to a small percentage of JackThreads users. Facebook is making Autofill developer documentation available now, but devs won’t be able to turn on Autofill With Facebook until they’re approved.
Using “Autofill With Facebook”
Here’s how the feature works for users. Ecommerce app shoppers browse items and add them to their cart like they normally do. Then something different happens if they’ve previously stored billing info with Facebook when they bought a Facebook Gift, Credits or in-game purchase on desktop.
When these people go to checkout and are asked to fill-in their billing info like credit card number, billing address, and shipping address, a “Check Out Faster With Facebook” message and blue “Autofill Your Info button slides down from the top of the screen. When tapped, users are shuttled into their Facebook for iOS app where they can look over their payment details and select a shipping address.
They click ‘OK’ and on the back-end, Facebook and the app developer’s payment processor do a ‘handshake’ so the credit card and other info is securely transferred. On the front-end, the user only sees the last four digits of their credit card number for security. The use is then whisked back to the commerce app where they see their payment info pre-populated in the fields. They can then confirm their purchase without ever having had to type anything.
For users, this makes converting on mobile much quicker and simpler. That means they’re more likely to go through with a purchase before they get distracted or second-guess themselves. Ecommerce app developers earn more money thanks to more conversions.
As for payment processors, they get to handle more payment volume and earn more fees.
For Facebook, this part of ”Build – Grow – Monetize” platform strategy. When you make an auto-filled purchase, Facebook knows who you are, how much you spent, and in what app. That’s critical to it proving the return on investment of its app install ads. If JackThreads hits you with a $1 Facebook ad to download its app, and Facebook sees that you clicked and five minutes later spent $25 at JackThreads, it can convince the ecommerce app developer it’s a good use of spend.
Gmail's Ongoing Email Slowdown Nearing Resolution
Good news! Today you can blame your non-responsiveness to all those important emails you’ve been ignoring on Google itself. The company’s online email service Gmail has been experiencing issues leading to delayed emails and attachments failing to download, the company confirmed. Earlier this morning, Google said an estimated 0.24 percent of its Gmail user base was affected by these problems, but in an update released later this afternoon, the delays were said to being affecting “less than 50 percent of Gmail users.”
Given the wording of that announcement, it sounded like, at first, things were getting worse instead of better. Gmail has some 425 million users, according to a public announcement detailing the size of its user base, which was revealed last summer at its Google I/O developer conference.
Google has been providing regular updates regarding the situation throughout the day, the first appearing at 10:25 a.m. ET and noting that it was then starting to investigate reports of an issue with Gmail. This was followed by an update over an hour later that informed customers that delays were involved and some attachments were failing to load.
Updates released at 12:43 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:05 p.m., and 2:45 p.m. ET so far only said that the team is continuing to investigate the problem and will update when there’s more information available.
At 3:00 p.m. ET, the company added that the service has been restored for some users, and it expects full resolution within an hour, but this time frame may change. Google did not say which percentage of the “less than 50 percent” of users has had service restored.
We reached out to Google via email for comment on what may have caused this issue, and other details, but you know…
Poor Sales In India Force Maps Provider Sygic To Release Navigation App For Free
App developers are struggling to make money in India because of low credit card penetration, according to Michael Stencl, CEO of maps provider Sygic, which has now dropped the $5.58 fee to download its GPS navigation app. As Indian Android owners remain reluctant to purchase apps, mapping providers are turning to features such as offline availability to compete with Google, which has grown in stature since launching turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic updates for Indian smartphone users last year.
Stencl told TechCrunch it was forced to eliminate the fee for the Android version of the Sygic India: GPS Navigation app because of low daily sales in India (~$250 a day) — about a sixth of sales in the United States (>$1,500 a day). Meanwhile, Sygic’s iPhone app, which also uses data from local digital cartographer MapmyIndia, still costs a prohibitive $27.99.
“Our Sygic & MapmyIndia app has been one of the most successful and top-grossing in India on Google Play, but India still has a very low penetration of credit cards, which makes it difficult to monetize there successfully,” Stencl said. ”In order to maintain a competitive marketshare, we have decided to make our app free, and wait until the market in India is more developed.
“Over the past four years, Sygic has witnessed revenue growth of nearly 250%, and we feel that by continuing to invest development resources in key geographies like India, and maintaining a customer focused strategy, we will be able to extend our leadership position globally.”
While Indians downloaded 150 millions apps from the Google Play store by October 2012, only 0.5 percent of customers paid to download these apps, according to a recent report called “India’s mobile internet 2013” by Avendus Capital. The average price was just over $1, and Avendus estimates the Google Play store sold about $2 million worth of apps this year. However, the report predicts that the Indian app market will grow five-fold by 2016, to be worth about $30 million.
India’s credit card adoption languishes at around 20 percent, according to a 2012 HSBC report, but credit spending could pick up in the future as more cards have been issued in recent years.
Sygic’s new free app also works offline, which is a useful feature in a country where the network coverage is sporadic as you move around cities and into the rural areas. TomTom recently released a local version of its Android navigation app, which costs about $30, and also works offline. It also allows users to search for a location based on a nearby landmark or point-of-interest (this is the most popular, and usually the most accurate, way to get around cities in India). So far the TomTom app has been downloaded between 10 and 50 times, compared to over 10,000 downloads for the Sygic app. It’s still a far cry from Sygic’s 30 million global downloads.
The offline availability is a key differentiator from incumbent Google, which is increasingly integrating Waze’s social navigation and traffic data into the Maps apps, following the search engine giant’s recent $1 billion acquisition of the Israeli startup.
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