PayPal extends One Touch payment to online transactions

CHICAGO (Reuters) - PayPal, eBay Inc's electronic payments division, said on Tuesday it will extend its single-touch payment service from mobile devices to online transactions to try to reduce the $4 trillion in merchandise abandoned in retailers' online shopping carts every year due to complicated checkout procedures. PayPal One Touch, which is widely used by shoppers on mobile phones, is designed to ease checkout flows that have users bouncing between screens and typing in personal information, which leads to millions of unfinished transactions. The average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 68 percent, according to the Baymard Institute, an e-commerce research firm. PayPal One Touch will allow customers a secure checkout across PayPal-enabled websites with a single touch, without having to re-enter login information, Anuj Nayar, PayPal's senior director of global initiatives said in an interview. The move to offer a simple, seamless checkout experience is not only spurring competition online but in stores with digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet. (Reporting by Nandita Bose in Chicago; Editing by Peter Galloway)