Initial launch partners include American retailers Warby Parker and Saks Fifth Avenue but the new options could prove particularly attractive for brands in the UK. In the case of Twitter, tweets from participating brands now contain a “Buy” button; clicking on it pulls up a pop-up screen in which users make product selections and order straight from the app. Shoppers give Twitter their credit card information once and the app stores it for all future Relay payments.
Advertisement
For app developers, Relay is a set of APIs for building great in-app buying experiences.
And if it turns out that this is the way people end up wanting to buy things – directly on Twitter instead of through a company’s website – then expect to see a lot more tweets with “buy” buttons, and not just on Twitter.
“That shouldn’t be surprising – most mobile shopping sites are fundamentally the same as the desktop sites that preceded them, despite the medium calling for something completely different”, Chandrasekaran added.
Patrick Collison, Stripe’s chief executive officer, said mobile devices are used 60 percent of the time to browse shopping sites, but only 15 percent of the time to make purchases. While Twitter has already been testing a “Buy” button, Relay is intended to open the door to any merchant that wants to reach customers through the social network. And the reasons they describe are well known – the slow, discouraging path to purchase on mobile is a nightmare for most retailers right now. The common consumer will be able to click the buy button and enter their shipping and payment information without being redirected from their original Twitter site.
Stripe was valued at billion in July, after a funding round that included an investment from Visa Inc.
Advertisement
A tool like Relay helps bolster Stripe’s appeal for companies that have thought of mobile as the inevitable next frontier in e-commerce, but have felt held back by the current toolset. The introduction of Relay is a big deal for the company, but it’s success will hinge on social partnerships. This means that they can make a single list of their products because as long as they use Relay, the listed items will show up.
