Chase Pay online 'buy button' debuts via BigCommerce

The competition and incentive for an issuer like JPMorgan Chase to have its payment option front-and-center on an e-retailer checkout page is increasing, due largely to Visa and Mastercard agreeing to a standard for a common e-commerce pay button and PayPal continuing to advance its one-click online payment technology.

Chase will have its place on the BigCommerce platform soon, as retailers will be able to accept Chase Pay on their online stores this summer.

In addition, Chase's WePay subsidiary will handle the merchant onboarding, adding to BigCommerce's more than 60,000 small and mid-size retailers it helps manage shipping and payments, as well as listing products on Amazon, eBay and Facebook marketplaces.

Scott McIntyre/Bloomberg

JPMorgan Chase acquired WePay last year for $200 million to bolster its merchant acquiring and digital payments expansions. WePay mostly provides tools that help small and mid-size merchants build e-commerce interfaces.

“We are working together to make great digital storefronts even stronger by streamlining the checkout and payments experience and making payment options more accessible to our customers,” Rob Cameron, president of partnerships for Merchant Services at Chase, said in a Tuesday press release.

Chase Visa credit and debit cardholders will be able to complete transactions in seconds using their Chase credentials and, if eligible, redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards through the sites.

BigCommerce has added nearly every e-commerce payment option to its platform, including PayPal Credit last year so that merchants could offer customers a flexible financing option. Bigcommerce had incorporated PayPal's OneTouch instant checkout service three years ago.

Amazon customers shopping at merchant sites powered through BigCommerce have the option to choose Amazon Pay at checkout as well.

Austin-based BigCommerce established a partnership with Square to allow Square's small and micro merchants the option to establish an e-commerce presence and then manage inventory for physical and online stores with automatic import of a product catalog from Square onto the platform.

“Checkout optimization represents one of the single biggest challenges that online retailers continue to face," Russell Klein, chief development officer at BigCommerce, said in the release. "One way that BigCommerce is driving superior conversion rates is by giving merchants and their consumers access to the industry’s most trusted payments technologies.”

Chase Pay has traveled a busy road as well since its debut in late 2016, establishing various deals with retailers and technology providers to move its QR code-based technology to the forefront of the mobile wallet landscape. As part of that progress, Chase invested $10 million into the LevelUp payments and loyalty platform.

Chase Pay is built on the ChaseNet processing platform, a closed-loop service that counts Walmart as one of its clients. In turn, Walmart began accepting Chase Pay as an in-app payment method late in 2016.