Merchant processor Square announced a new product called “Square x TikTok” that allows merchants to send customers directly to their online stores from TikTok content videos.
As TikTok soars past 1 billion registered users, 70% of whom are under the age of 40, the video sound bite platform is becoming more valuable to advertisers, retailers, and other commerce merchants. Just as the standard television commercial segment has shrunk over the years from 1 minute to 10 seconds, advertisers and merchants are gravitating from video pioneer site YouTube and embracing the shorter, faster TikTok platform. At the same time, TikTok is making that path easier with its recent announcement that it is increasing its maximum allowable video length from 1 minute to 3 minutes.
Square also announced the launch of Snippets, its API that assists users in creating digital content, making it easier for small businesses to have an advertising presence on popular platforms like TikTok. This continues the trend of embedded commerce that is powering the Paradox of Payments: as consumers and merchants become more aware of the growing flexibility of payment technology, payments themselves are fading into the background, disappearing as separate workflows and becoming embedded in the workflows that created them. The consumer’s buying journey that starts with product awareness and culminates with product purchase is now collapsed into one easy step on TikTok.
The only way we’ve found to spend money faster is through the high-speed EZ Pass lanes on the Throgs Neck Bridge.
Overview by Don Apgar, Director, Merchant Services Advisory Practice at Mercator Advisory Group
