PayPal is bringing a new service to the web that will let people make their purchases even faster. Called One Touch, the service rolling out today allows people to pay with PayPal without requiring them to log in every time they want to buy something. It’s a significant shift from PayPal’s previous system, which required customers to enter their username and password whenever they wanted to make a purchase.
With One Touch, which PayPal introduced for mobile users last year, the username and password are entered only once, and then can be used for multiple purchases. It was originally created to help boost mobile e-commerce purchases, which were being hurt by a clunky login flow that required people to enter their account credentials every time they wanted to buy something.
Most merchants that use PayPal will automatically be upgraded to One Touch. That means 165 million PayPal customers will be able to take advantage of it right away. The service is currently only available in the U.S., but PayPal plans to expand it internationally.
One Touch is based on technology from PayPal’s acquisition of Braintree and comes as the company is facing increased competition from Stripe, Amazon, Square and other firms eager to get a slice of the digital payments pie. The deployment of these improvements are important for PayPal as the company prepares to spin off from its parent eBay.
