I was a bit surprised when I read the percentage of how many online shoppers use PayPal. Before you read on, take a quick guess at the number…
Here’s the percentage: 87.5% of online shoppers using PayPal to check out ultimately convert and buy. Visa Checkout converts online shoppers at a rate of 51.2%, says ComScore. Other payment options convert shoppers at a rate of 45.6%. This means that PayPal outperforms other payment platforms by 41.9%.
The high rate of completion by PayPal surprised me but it shouldn’t have. When I’m shopping online I definitely notice and appreciate having the PayPal option. Usually, if there isn’t a way to check out with PayPal, I will still buy the item, but I might not buy it right then. It never fails that I’m looking for something online after everyone else has gone to sleep. My purse is in the bedroom with the lights off and I don’t want to have to wake up my partner while I’m fumbling around to find my wallet.
Having an online checkout option that doesn’t require me to go get my credit card is a relief. I trust PayPal, and, apparently, so do many other people.
There is still a large percentage of the population who does not like to enter in credit card information over the internet. While they will not like to enter in a card directly to a website, they are more likely to trust a third-party provider like PayPal that they have to log in to and authorize. I found a separate study, released in 2015 by Bizrate, that said the first most trusted online retailer was Amazon. This was followed by PayPal, and eBay in third place.
This proves that it’s valuable to provide a variety of different payment options. Some people will still go get their credit card, but for the people who don’t want to, make it easy. A plugin called WordPress PayPal enables PayPal checkout on your WordPress site.