Checkout Google for online transactions

29 June 2006

Mumbai: Google Inc, the world's largest search engine, announced on Thursday the launch of Google Checkout, an integrated search process that makes ecommerce — both buying and selling — convenient, faster and more secure and could help online merchants boost sales and Google expects to attract advertising revenue from them.

Checkout would compete with eBay Inc.'s PayPal online payment system.

Google has integrated Checkout with search and advertising to benefit both the buyer and the seller. While it enables the buyer to purchase from participating stores with a single Google login, it helps merchant participants in its advertising programme, AdWords, to acquire new customers and process all or part of their sales free of cost.

"By integrating the checkout process with search and advertising, we're helping our users complete the cycle of searching, finding and buying," said Salar Kamangar, vice president of product management at Google. It also helps to avoid long lines and voluminous data entry in the buying and selling process, he said. Google is responsible for processing the credit card payments.

Shoppers can find Google Checkout stores by looking at the icons on AdWords advertisements or when they come across the Google Checkout option on a merchant's site. Shoppers can create a Google Checkout login right from the merchant's site with a single user name and password by entering basic information, such as their contact details, payment preferences, and shipping information.