Shopify and Moovweb are two of the digital commerce providers potentially bringing Apple Pay to hundreds of thousands of merchants’ Web sites in a move that could increase online sales, due to the technology’s enhanced security.

During Monday’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple revealed that its popular mobile payments service, Apple Pay, will be making its debut on the Web this fall with the help of several commerce platforms, including Shopify and Moovweb. Brands such as IBM and 1800Flowers have already announced their plans to integrate Apple Pay into their Web channels, reflecting marketers’ desire to implement more security-friendly solutions into their online sites.

“Banks, retailers and consumers desperately want a way to make online shopping safer, and integrating Apple Pay’s fingerprint sensor technology is an important step toward doing just that,” said Matt Schulz, senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com. “This is a great thing for Apple because it’s going to drive more interest in Apple Pay.

“However, it’s also a great thing for consumers because it will help make online shopping much safer,” he said. “Adding EMV chips to credit cards made it safer to use your card in person at the checkout counter but didn’t help at all with online purchases.

“That made online shopping sites an even more appealing target for bad guys. Biometrics are the future of credit card security. There’s simply too much money at stake for banks, retailers and consumers to continue to rely on old-fashioned security methods like passwords.”

Laying the groundwork
Shopify will power the ability for more than 250,000 retailers to offer Apple Pay to their online customers this fall. Individuals will be able to leverage one-click checkouts in a secure manner when shopping via Safari on Macs, iPhones and iPads.

Although mobile payments have continuously experienced improvement in speed, security and seamless interfaces, online shopping experiences have still been plagued with personal data breeches and sites that are not optimized for mobile devices and tablets.

Shopify’s partner merchants currently see more than 60 percent of all checkouts stem from mobile, although only 40 percent of these get completed.

The Apple Pay Web integration will enable retailers to offer a simplified checkout on Safari, which could prompt more customers to tap the “buy” button and purchase the items in their digital shopping carts.

Fellow digital commerce provider Moovweb has also said it will allocate $10 million to improving its platform in a bid to better serve its partner merchants that are planning to support in-browser Apple Pay, per Business Insider.

Challenges and opportunities
Retailers that have experienced difficulty with adopting mobile commerce technologies may find more ease in integrating Apple Pay for their Web channels. Consumers will now be able to enjoy the one-click Apple Pay checkout previously only available on mobile, without having to browse products on a small screen.

This means that retailers will still be able to showcase their products in full desktop size while offering even more seamless payment options. General adoption rates of Apple Pay may also increase, particularly among non-mobile-savvy consumers.

If retailers integrate their loyalty programs with Apple Pay for Web, it could spur even more individuals to test out the new in-browser shopping method.

“Anything Apple does is significant, but this is just another move in the global payments chess game,” said Ned Elton, chief growth officer at PEX. “It is far from a check-mate, however. It will undoubtedly have an impact on consumer adoption and changing their behavior, which is really the key challenge all the players face.

“The more ubiquitous the use case, the more consumers will get comfortable with using Apple Pay,” he said. “The real question is how many of the Shopify merchants adopt Apple Pay, and how prevalent they make it in their shopping cart.

“If that happens, Apple consumers will use it. Ultimately, the impact is capped by the fact that it exists solely in the Apple ecosystem – Shopify merchants who adopt and shoppers who use Safari on and Apple device. This won’t impact people in Samsung’s or Google’s ecosystem, but Apple’s move will just increase the pressure the other players face to expand their reach.”