Shopify Payment and confusing issues

As a bit of a digression, when you start a store on Shopify you are able to use something called "Shopify Payment", but I think one of the reasons why Shopify Payment has not become so popular is that it is very difficult for us Japanese to understand what the difference is between this and Shopify itself.

What is Shopify Payment?

In short, the payment platform provided by Shopify is "Shopify Payment", but even if you were told that , I think most people would just think "Yeah, well, it's a Shopify service, after all ", and I remember it took me quite a while to realise that Shopify Payment and Shopify should be considered as separate entities!

Shopify Payment is just a payment platform . It is not a separate platform that you need to use when making payments with Shopify, but it is more advantageous to use Shopify Payment with Shopify!

In fact, you can use "KOMOJU" or "GMO Payment" as your payment platform without using Shopify Payment. You can also use credit card payments with KOMOJU, convenience store payments, and mobile carrier payments! It's super convenient.

However, if you don't use Shopify Payment, the payment fees become more expensive, so I generally don't use my KOMOJU credit card, even though I use it in conjunction with Shopify Payment.

As you may have noticed, KOMOJU is just one of the services offered by Shopify, as it is a payment platform . It may be easier to understand if you think of KOMOJU as a service on the same level.

If we look outside of e-commerce, there are payment services such as "AirPay," "Squear," Square, and "Rakuten Pay," which will be easy to understand for those who have managed credit card payments, but it will be easier to understand what follows if you realize that "shopify Payment" is a payment platform run by shopify.

Not very well known (in Japan)

The biggest concern about using it is the overwhelming lack of "familiarity". In fact, if you have read this article so far, you may have noticed that you are wondering, "What on earth is Shop Pay?" Also, at least for those of you who are thinking of researching Shop Pay, while researching Shopify, you may have wondered, "What is Shop Pay?"

That's right. It's a word that you don't encounter in your everyday life, so even people who arrive at Shopify and look it up might think, "What is this?"

And when you look at the Shopify logo

Among these many green areas

It's no wonder that you don't get it when you see this purple color.

What is that? It looks suspicious so let's stop.

Isn't this the current reaction in Japan?

Unfortunately, Japanese people are extremely slow to grasp this kind of feeling or information.

I don't want to register my credit card details on a site where I don't know them.

There are many people who think like this, and a service called Paypal is now popular that allows you to make purchases without disclosing your credit card details for each payment, but how well known is Paypal? The reality is that most people don't even know it exists .

When a company has a name recognition like Google, Apple, or Amazon, people start to feel secure enough to use it, but even Paypal, which is supposed to be secure, is not that popular.

What you don't know is suspicious

It seems suspicious, so let's check it out! I think this is because Japanese people have a strong status quo mindset and don't want to move forward, but shopPay is even less well-known than Paypal, so it only makes it more suspicious. Japanese people don't start using this kind of thing until a lot of people around them start using it. For a situation where a lot of people around you start using it, it has to be heavily promoted and reach the level of "seeing it every day."

It feels like Paypay has been advertised so much that it is finally being recognized. ( Paypal and Paypay are completely different things! )

Shopify doesn't seem to be very proactive in terms of popularizing it in Japan, so I wonder if they've given up or don't realize that awareness activities are necessary? I think it's a little strange, but I also think it's extremely difficult to actually popularize it. It's convenient and has security advantages, though...

Shopify stores will continue to increase in number in Japan, so perhaps in five years time it will be widely recognized, but at the moment I believe it is an almost meaningless payment service in Japan.

How well known is it overseas?

Still, what's the benefit of being able to use Shop Pay?

You may face the following problem, but this is most effective when you want to do "cross-border e-commerce" .

Shopify's name recognition in Japan is still developing, but if we look overseas, it boasts an extremely high share of 90% when creating new EC sites outside of malls (Amazon, eBay, etc. ). In other words, people overseas often have the opportunity to shop on sites created with Shopify when using EC sites.

As a result, people are finding shop Pay convenient and the number of people using shop Pay is increasing year by year.

Japanese people tend not to look overseas, so I don't think they understand how much people overseas want Japanese products, but there are a lot of people overseas who want Japanese products. However, there are very few stores that are involved in cross-border e-commerce.

I think one of the reasons why people are hesitant to actually try cross-border e-commerce is the overwhelming inconvenience of being an "island nation" in terms of delivery, but I also think that people overseas don't know where to buy, and even if they find a store where they can buy, they are skeptical about the reliability of that store, right?

In fact, I sometimes buy things from overseas shops through cross-border e-commerce, but it takes a lot of courage to input a credit card number when buying something from overseas, and there have been many times when I thought, "I'll give up on buying something because I can't use Paypal."

But what if Shop Pay, which boasts the same name recognition as Paypal, could be used at a certain store in Japan?

"Oh, I can use Shop Pay"

• No credit card required
• No address entry required
• Buy with one click

This not only removes sales concerns, but also significantly reduces the amount of time required for a purchase, which is actually quite beneficial in terms of conversion on e-commerce sites, where customers "buy while they're still undecided."

For people overseas who don't have this "anxiety" that barely applies to Japanese people, being able to use ShopPay is actually a relief. You can buy things right away .

"Shop Pay can be used"

It is a good idea to keep in mind that just this one feature can give you an advantage when conducting cross-border e-commerce.

summary

To sum up, Shop Pay is

• What is Shopify Pay?
• Shopify Payment is confusing because of the terminology
• Peace of mind in terms of security
• Japan's name recognition is catastrophically low
• There is overseas recognition
• Cross-border e-commerce leads to a sense of security

I think there is something to be said for that.

In the end, it's not a suspicious product , but the extremely low awareness of it is a problem, and it's not a promotional material at all in Japan.

"Shop Pay can be used"

Its very existence may be an advantage.

I think that's what Shop Pay is all about.

It seems that in the future Shopify is planning to make further improvements such as shortening the path to shopping by using Shop Pay , so if it becomes more widely used in Japan, the path to shopping will be incredibly short, which could significantly increase conversion rates (in this case, purchase rates).

This depends on the rate of adoption, so it's not something I can say with certainty that "you should install it!", but at the very least, it's something that " you won't lose anything by installing it, " and I think that if there is more work done on promoting it across the industry, it has the potential to bring tremendous benefits to all merchants who use Shopify.

There is an overwhelming lack of efforts to spread awareness, so I urge everyone reading this article to proactively put up signs about Shop Pay somewhere and raise awareness in Japan, so that we can all become accustomed to this "WIN x WIN" situation.

I truly believe that!