Alternate Payment Solutions Like Google Checkout Gaining On Traditional Credit Card Payments

They are not out pacing credit cards yet, but the use of alternate payment solutions by mainstream retail webs is on the rise.

The e-commerce consulting firm Brulant has published a comparison showing the results from an October 2006 survey and a February 2007 follow up survey. This study shows that the largest e-commerce online stores are reporting an 267% increase in the use of non-traditional payment methods.

In October, the firm Brulant Principal Stephen Morris took a close look at the payment methods on the 100 largest sites in their survey which included Federated, Staples, Wal-Mart, Target, JC Penney, The Home Depot and Rite Aid. For this survey, they considered non-traditional payments to be Bill Me Later, Google Checkout and PayPal. Although a 267 % increase sounds like a huge increase in non-traditional payments, the same survey also showed that only 24 percent of the tracked sites offered any alternative payment.

Veteran E-Commerce analyst Patti Freeman Evans—who tracks retail trends for Jupiter Research had this to say,

“Bill Me Later, Pay Pal, and Google Checkout have all been very aggressive over the last 8 months or so in terms of acquiring new retailers to feature their products,” Evans said, “so the increase is not wholly surprising.” *Storefrontbacktalk.com