Amazon 1-Click patent expiring: Make the most of this opportunity

$136 billion in sales. 304 million active customers.

Sounds pretty good, huh?

Amazon produces jaw-dropping results that any business would kill for. And the retailer’s patented 1-Click payment system – which enables shoppers to buy something with a single click, using stored payment and shipping information – is one of the key competitive advantages that has driven their success.

But Amazon’s U.S. patent on 1-Click is set to expire on September 11, 2017. Until that point, any e-commerce store who wanted to offer this experience would have to license it from Amazon (like Apple, who paid an undisclosed sum to enable billions of people to easily buy apps without bothering with a pesky checkout page).

Amazon upped the ante for all e-commerce businesses when they introduced 1-Click – but now any business can participate. So, what does this mean for you?

The 1-Click experience is powered by trust

How do you know which users you can trust, and which you can’t? Businesses face this question hundreds – or even thousands – of times a day. If you’re unsure, you can throw up roadblocks like passwords or two-factor authentication. But if you’re dealing with a returning user, there’s no reason to force them through extra hoops. They should be getting the red-carpet experience.

A number of e-commerce sites allow customers to save their payment info for future use, which is convenient. But 1-Click goes even further by not even rerouting you to a checkout page to confirm your order. A single click (or tap) and it’s done. No time to second-guess your purchase. Say hello to impulse buys – and more sales.

In the e-commerce checkout game, each millisecond of page load time, additional form field, and extra step counts against your conversion rate. However, when you have access to the right data, you can dynamically remove roadblocks and engineer the fastest, smoothest experience possible for your good users. That’s why 1-Click is so powerful: Amazon has ensured that trusted customers can enjoy a completely frictionless buying experience.

1-Click is something any site can leverage

Now that Amazon’s patent has expired, any company with a repeat customer base should introduce a single-click experience. Imagine if users of a gaming site could buy with one click and get on with their game, or shoppers at a clothing site could quickly nab a pair of shoes in between meetings at work. It’s a no-brainer.

The good news: There’s nothing proprietary about 1-Click. You don’t need special knowledge to implement it. It’s not even “technology.” Basically, there is nothing to stop any enterprise-commerce site from debuting their own 1-Click experience on September 12.

However, if you want to entice your customers to take advantage of 1-Click, they’ll need to first create accounts and save their credentials. How you do this depends on your e-commerce platform or payment processor, so check in with them for more information on how to do this.

If you have customers creating accounts, you also need strong ATO (account takeover) protection

Behind every 1-Click experience is a customer account (plus saved payment and billing info). If you’re creating your own 1-Click experience by asking customers to create accounts and save their payment credentials, you become a very attractive target for fraudsters.

Why? Because data breaches are on the rise, with millions of credentials on sale for cheap across the dark web – just look at the recent Equifax breach, which affected half of the U.S. population. And  59% of consumers reuse login credentials across multiple sites. That makes it scarily easy for a fraudster to gain access to a customer account – and to their saved payment information.

We all know 1-Click makes it much easier for shoppers to fly through checkout…but you don’t want those lightning-fast shoppers to be fraudsters.

Digital wallets are likely to create their own 1-click options – but that doesn’t change your fraud liability

Digital wallets like Visa Checkout, Mastercard Masterpass, or PayPal are likely to introduce a 1-Click option that merchant sites can leverage by adding a button to their checkout page. However, the risk protection offered by these third parties are minimal, so you’ll want to supplement with a more powerful solution.

If someone were to hack into a user’s account and commit fraud – and you get levied with a chargeback – you’d still be on the hook (even if the 1-Click experience is on Visa’s or Mastercard’s or Paypal’s side).

Guest checkout is still an option that consumers want

Amazon is in a pretty privileged position as the #1 e-commerce site in the world. Occupying that top spot means they don’t have to allow guest checkout at all. And with every shopper signing in, they get an incredible level of data from their customers which allows them to personalize, encourage people to buy more, etc.

But not every e-commerce company has the luxury of being able to say “create an account or you don’t get to buy from us.” Research shows that 30% of shoppers will leave your site if they are forced to create an account, so offering the option of guest checkout is still a good practice.

However, with anonymous guest checkout, you need to leverage the right data intelligently to make sure you aren’t increasing risk. This is where machine learning really shines as a fraud-prevention technology: it can process enormous and diverse datasets in real time, as transactions and interactions are actually happening, largely taking the guesswork and loopholes out of catching deceptive and malicious users.

Want to learn more about how machine learning can help you fight fraud? Download our free ebook (below)!