Stripe has released Relay, a new tool that allows third parties such as Twitter and ShopStyle to offer buying capabilities within their own apps.
What does it do?
According to Stripe, Relay is “an API for stores to publish their products, and for apps to read them. Relay makes it easier for developers to build great mobile e-commerce experiences, and for stores to participate in them.”
Native mobile apps
In its blog, Stripe clearly emphasises the importance of providing swift purchases. It mentions how despite mobile devices representing 60 per cent of browsing traffic for shopping sites, they only make up 15 per cent of purchases.
“What does work?[…]buying experiences designed to let the user transact as quickly as possible, reuse existing payment details across many orders, and finish the entire transaction in the same app they started in.”
Stripe’s prime example of how Relay can be deployed comes in the form of Twitter, one of its launch partners. Retailers can sell anything within tweets – they have a dashboard where they can define products and get a link which they can tweet out. A buy-button then comes up allowing Twitter users to purchase products without having to leave the social media site.
“At Twitter we’re focusing on the user experience, and this partnership is about growing the merchants to make it easy and frictionless to help merchants sell in more real-time,” Twitter head of commerce Nathan Hubbard said.
An example of Relay in action is shown by the Warby Parker account:
All the payment information is stored on Stripe. Once you click the buy-button, a window comes up asking you to input your payment details.
Initially, Stripe is also working with companies such as Inmobi, ShopStyle and Spring. App developers can enable Relay purchases directly within their apps rather than getting pushed to third-party websites.
Whitepapers
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