Zooz is one of the newest up-and-comers in the mobile microtransaction space, an area that is growing rapidly now that developers are monetizing their apps with more flexibility, and far more successfully.

An application that offers paid add-ons needs a way to process purchases both effectively, supporting a broad range of payment options, and conveniently to make sure as many customers as possible push through with the transaction. This is where Zooz hopes to make a name for itself with its embedded cart solution, which aims to simplify this entire process.

The startup, riding on the momentum of RewardLoop’s seed funding round from earlier this month, announced an HTML5 version of its SDK that allows developers to integrate their apps with the solution by copy/pasting a mere three lines into their code. This adds the capability to support transactions via credit card, PayPal, and Google Wallet – a capability that was enough to build up a user base of 1,000 just two months after Zooz’s beta launch.

Co-founder and CEO of ZooZ Oren Levy commented, “With our new HTML5 offering, developers can now quickly and easily create secure in-app payment capabilities for almost any mobile device and platform in the market today, including older-generation phones. By enabling developers to deliver fully-featured native, HTML5, and hybrid mobile payment solutions via a single platform, we’re accelerating the pace of app development and aggressively opening up huge business opportunities for both mobile developers and enterprises.”

HTML5 is a big bet for a lot of companies these days, courting the arrival of new standards to reshape our mobile experience for something more uniform.  Familiarity is something Zooz wants more than anything when it comes to mobile users, with the ultimate goal of being the mobile payments platform that consumers will immediately recognize.  Trust, Levy points out, is one of the most important things that needs to develop around the mobile space, especially when it comes to payment platforms.  There’s no telling how long it will take for HTML5 to become a true standard across the board, but Zooz is maintaining an inclusive level of flexibility around mobile payments and supported platforms to ensure its appeal to the consumer first.  As everyone knows, developers tend to follow the consumer.

That strategy has led Zooz to place its tools as add-ons for larger developer platforms like Appcelerator Titanium, working with channel partners to distribute its technology to the right developers.  What will remain a challenge for Zooz and others in the mobile payments space is staying competitive around an app market that’s becoming more intertwined with the mobile web, minimizing the need for app-specific tools.

One way Zooz is hoping to stand out from the crowd is with its extensive security measures, leveraging big data techniques to monitor user behavior in order to detect fraud.  “We fingerprint devices so even if someone hacks your phone, we have nine different layers of security.  We’ll be alerted,” Levy explains.

The young company seems to have gotten off on the right foot, but there’s a lot of competition out there from the major platforms themselves. Amazon introduced a very similar function just last month for publishers on the Amazon Appstore for Android, and it has the advantage of a pre-existing reputation as a reliable payment processing platform.  That being said, Zooz includes Amazon as a payment option in its toolkit, ensuring that consumers have choice with the brands they already know.

Contributors: Maria Deutscher