The need for mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion from a cus­tomer-cen­tric per­spec­tive is far over­due. For near­ly 20 years we’ve been wait­ing for the adop­tion of any kind of dig­i­tal wal­let. 2015 turned out to final­ly be the year of mobile (mobile search final­ly eclipsed desk­top search) and we’re start­ing to see the emer­gence of tech­nol­o­gy and finan­cial ser­vices mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion options that may actu­al­ly deserve adop­tion for both desk­top and mobile.

Brands will encounter sev­er­al hur­dles on their quest to improve mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion. Here are six keys to suc­cess­ful mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion.

1. Meet Consumer Demand

Con­sumers are demand­ing eas­i­er check­out options as they become accus­tomed to fric­tion­less and one-touch check­out such as the expe­ri­ence they have with Uber and Airbnb, which allows the app to store your pay­ment pref­er­ences for ongo­ing use.

Com­pa­nies such as Brain­tree (a Pay­Pal com­pa­ny) have emerged to accept every­thing from Pay­Pal to Bit­coin to Apple pay to Google Wal­let and any oth­ers with a sin­gle inte­gra­tion touch­point. Brain­tree pro­vides a mer­chant account, pay­ment gate­way, and recur­ring billing and cred­it card stor­age. Their One Touch seam­less check­out and one click instal­la­tion are solv­ing mobile check­out for both brands and con­sumers as they increase col­lab­o­ra­tion efforts with com­pa­nies like Magen­to, Big­Com­merce, and oth­er mer­chants to enable one touch check­out.

Mobile is the dri­ving force behind Face­book growth, 59 per­cent of its $2.3 bil­lion of ad rev­enues in the first quar­ter of this year came from mobile. As brands and social plat­forms cre­ate strat­e­gy around a mobile-first expe­ri­ence con­sumers will con­tin­ue to up the ante on expec­ta­tion of the mobile check­out process.

2. Mobile Wallet Adoption

Ecom­merce, shop­ping carts, and billing appli­ca­tions have to become more seam­less for the mobile user. How­ev­er, the need for faster, eas­i­er mobile pay­ment pro­cess­ing faces a myr­i­ad of hur­dles. Adop­tion is still slow because not every­one trusts the secu­ri­ty of mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion.

The issues inher­ent in mobile pay­ment pro­cess­ing, whether it’s in-per­son pay­ments, remote pay­ments or peer-to-peer pay­ments, are being resolved by mer­chants, banks and 3rd par­ty solu­tions and a clear win­ner has yet to emerge. Google Wal­let, Apple Pay, and Pay­Pal are attempt­ing to over­come the adop­tion issue.

Google Wal­let is now FDIC insured and oth­ers will like­ly fol­low suit. They know they will need to pro­vide improved secu­ri­ty along with sophis­ti­cat­ed finan­cial ser­vices and tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion.

Align­ing mer­chants, users, and banks is enor­mous­ly com­plex and some banks will be intro­duc­ing their own wal­lets, as will some mer­chants. But brands can’t wait for time to declare a win­ner in this race.

Adop­tion of more secure mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion is going to become the norm. As report­ed on PYMNTS.com:

“New require­ments for mer­chants will go into effect by July 2015. And for some mer­chants, it has the poten­tial to change the user expe­ri­ence that they have worked so hard to per­fect, despite the good­ness that it will deliv­er in the form of increased com­pli­ance with card­hold­er data pro­tec­tion require­ments.”

Brand suc­cess in adopt­ing a mobile wal­let will depend on strik­ing a bal­ance between two impor­tant pri­or­i­ties; secu­ri­ty of the check­out and ease of check­out.

3. Invest In Mobile Payment Integration

The cost of improv­ing mobile task com­ple­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regards to mobile pay­ments, is going to require a large invest­ment. Brands will need to ded­i­cate bud­get, resources, and ongo­ing project spon­sor­ship for the con­tin­ued revi­sions and improve­ments that will be nec­es­sary for iter­a­tive improve­ment to the mobile pay­ment expe­ri­ence.

Brands may need to focus less on ROI from improved mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion and more on user secu­ri­ty and expe­ri­ence for this invest­ment in infra­struc­ture and process.

4. Improve The Mobile Checkout Process

Hav­ing a fast and easy mobile pay­ment solu­tion is just one part of the equa­tion. Com­bin­ing the need for improved usabil­i­ty, increased speed, and improved pay­ment inte­gra­tion options for mobile users are table stakes for achiev­ing mobile suc­cess.

Lever­ag­ing form test­ing plat­forms such as Form­stack and Hot­jar pro­vide the abil­i­ty to test mobile inte­gra­tion and oth­er forms to be able to achieve a more stream­lined expe­ri­ence for mobile users.

The mobile pay­ment process is heav­i­ly depen­dent on the user inter­face. Lever­ag­ing user test­ing com­pa­nies such as User­Zoom can iter­a­tive­ly improve the process.

5. Prioritize Mobile First

PayPal’s Don Schul­man rec­om­mends we can’t just be test­ing for improved secu­ri­ty, but that we need to be “con­sumer cham­pi­ons” and help pro­vide a mobile-first expe­ri­ence that takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the needs of con­sumers across the spec­trum of pay­ment options and inte­gra­tion.

Part­ner­ships to deal with these issues to date have been slow to emerge. PayPal’s Brain­tree is grow­ing quick­ly as is Stripe, which allows both pri­vate indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es to accept pay­ments. Plat­form builders like Kent Schnepp, founder of Odysys, are choos­ing Stripe because of use of use as well as their com­pet­i­tive rates and that they have a robust doc­u­ment­ed API.

Brands that ded­i­cate resources to mobile-first gain an advan­tage on inte­gra­tion and mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that aren’t as rel­e­vant for desk­top. For exam­ple, there is enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to align a consumer’s local actions with mobile wal­let options.

Pro­vid­ing a coupon at check­out for a cus­tomer who is at a local store is a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, as demon­strat­ed by this Men’s Ware­house case study.

It becomes less about pay­ment pro­cess­ing and more about improv­ing and per­son­al­iz­ing the shop­ping expe­ri­ence with local and mobile inte­gra­tion.

6. Measure Mobile Payment Success

Improve­ments in mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion can dra­mat­i­cal­ly impact con­ver­sion. That’s a great place to begin mea­sure­ment to quan­ti­fy suc­cess and invest­ment, but your mea­sure­ment should go fur­ther.

Brands should use quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive data as they cre­ate an iter­a­tive plan for mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion improve­ment. Brand per­cep­tion and image are inex­tri­ca­bly tied to our brand expe­ri­ence includ­ing the mobile check­out process.

Under­stand­ing the qual­i­ta­tive result of mobile pay­ment invest­ment may be as impor­tant as the met­rics around rev­enue increas­es from improved mobile check­out.

Takeaways

As mobile cus­tomers begin to have bet­ter mobile pay­ment expe­ri­ences, they will come to expect all mobile check­outs to be as good as their best expe­ri­ences, so com­par­ing your mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion with com­peti­tors may be irrel­e­vant.

It’s not good enough to wait on the side­lines for finan­cial insti­tu­tions and mobile expe­ri­ence to work out all of the kinks in the mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion land­scape. Brands must be first-adopters. It’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for your brand to work through its issues and show your cus­tomers you care about their mobile pay­ment expe­ri­ence.

Final­ly, mobile users cre­ate a strong rela­tion­ship between their mobile expe­ri­ence and the brand. If you’re strug­gling to find bud­get to improve mobile pay­ments, it may be time to invest brand bud­get into those iter­a­tive improve­ments.

How are you address­ing mobile pay­ment inte­gra­tion to improve brand expe­ri­ence?