Consumers are drowning in Buy Buttons from merchants, mobile OS suppliers, and merchants, but Ajay Banga, Mastercard’s president and chief executive officer is “Very, very Optimistic” that everyone will focus on the Secure Remote Commerce buy button once the standard is released from EMVCo and implemented by Mastercard and Visa:
“Mastercard Inc. president and chief executive Ajay Banga says he’s “very, very optimistic” about the Secure Remote Commerce initiative to reduce clutter on online checkout pages.
Banga’s comments came Tuesday morning as he reviewed Mastercard’s results for the third quarter, a period in which U.S. purchase volume rose 10.7% year-over-year to $385 billion and profits jumped 33% to $1.86 billion.
EMVCo, the standards body owned by the major global card networks, recently submitted a draft of its proposed SRC standard for comment by merchants, processors, and card issuers. SRC will create a so-called common buy button to replace the plethora of brands on e-commerce checkout pages, with the goal of reducing consumer confusion while enhancing transaction flow and security.
Banga: ‘It’s going to be a run, it’s not going to be something that’s going to end in a 100-yard dash.’ ”
Because Mercator has not been told how Ajay (or others) will convert that optimism into reality, we reserve our judgment. After all, it’s possible that Ajay under-estimates the pent-up hostility many large merchants have for Mastercard, Visa, due to deadlines to deploy other EMVCo-standards. Or he may be overestimating the effectiveness of the common buy button, as it will need to operate much more effectively than either the first implementation of 3D Secure or the first deployment of slow EMV that initially failed to support PIN debit cards merchants love. Then there is the question of who will educate the cardholders to recognize what we assume will be a new brand name. This requires an expensive and coordinated marketing blitz timed with visible market acceptance by banks and eCommerce websites – an area where the networks failed while deploying dual-mode contactless cards.
So no matter how you look at this, it is clear success will require significant implementation rigor, an expensive and coordinated marketing effort, as well as the ability to learn from past mistakes. If Mastercard and the other Common Buy Button participants fail to make these investments then the longer term return is unlikely to materialize.
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
