In June we told you that mobile commerce was about to take a huge leap forward. Today it has, with Apple Pay for the web, giving shoppers the ability  to make easy and secure payments in Safari on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Demandware, a Salesforce company, is building Apple Pay support directly into the Demandware Commerce Cloud, enabling our clients to quickly take advantage of its benefits without hours of development time. Merchants can implement the feature through simple configuration. It’s literally a “check-the-box” feature. Apple Pay for the web is available today for iOS 10 and for Mac Sierra on September 20.

It’s no secret that phones are experiencing huge growth in the number of shopping baskets created and site visits, but actual transactions on mobile have not kept pace. That’s because the checkout process is clumsy and frustrating, requiring too many manual steps.

Apple Pay on the web eliminates the hassles, making it much easier for mobile users to complete a purchase, and eliminating the need for Mac browsers to type in billing and shipping information. The checkout process is now reduced to a single touch with Touch ID validation.

If a shopper is using a 2012 Mac or newer Mac and Safari, he or she will see the Apple Pay button on the pages where a merchant has added it. Shoppers initiate the checkout by clicking the Apple Pay button; and can then review and confirm shipping and payment information via Touch ID on their phone.

And since consumers can transact without supplying their credit card information to retailers – Apple Pay uses fully tokenized payments – consumers keep their sensitive payment information where they want it: in their own hands.

For retailers, the integration of Apple Pay with the Demandware Commerce Cloud removes friction in the buying process, helping fill “micro moments” with an easy single touch purchase, and therefore improving transaction rates. (This was explored in-depth in When Every Touchpoint is a Transaction) And since retailers never receive consumer PCI data, they limit their exposure to data security breaches and hackers.

The benefits are clear, and if early interest among our customers is any indication, this holiday shopping season should be a watershed event for mobile commerce.

The integration is made possible not only by Demandware, a Salesforce company, and Apple, but several Payment Service Providers (PSPs), which have completed a certified integration with the Demandware Commerce Cloud. These certified PSPs include Adyen, CyberSource, Worldpay and others.

Our role is to help retailers extend commerce to wherever shoppers want to buy, and to make the process as easy as possible. We are excited about the new possibilities created with Apple Pay on the web.

Interested? Contact your Customer Success Manager or get in touch at applepay@demandware.com