Shopify Inc. today announced plans to make its Shop Pay service available for online stores not hosted on its namesake cloud platform.

Shopify’s platform is used by retailers to build and manage e-commerce websites. It helped process $49.6 billion worth of online purchases last quarter, a 15% increase from the same time a year earlier. Shopify says its installed base includes millions of merchants.

Retailers with Shopify-hosted websites use its Shop Pay service to process customer purchases. It powers the checkout pages where users enter their payment information. Thanks to today’s update, large retailers will gain the ability to embed the service into e-commerce websites that are hosted not on Shopify’s platform but rather third-party infrastructure. 

Shopify says the service can help retailers generate more sales. According to market research cited by the company, Shop Pay increases the number of website visitors who turn into paying customers by up to 50%. It does so by significantly speeding up the online buying experience.

Users can save their payment information, shipping preferences and related details in Shop Pay to avoid re-entering the data during every purchase. From there onwards, the service automatically inputs the data into supported websites. When making a purchase, shoppers must only enter a onetime code or use a passkey, which is faster than manually filling checkout forms. 

Shopify Pay also offers other features. If consumers make a purchase on an e-commerce website where they shopped recently, the service removes the need to enter a one-time code or use passkey. That further speeds up the buying experience. 

Shopify is making Shop Pay available to e-commerce websites not hosted on its platform through a toolkit called Commerce Components. Introduced earlier this year, the toolkit enables large retailers to integrate key features of Shopify’s platform into their existing websites. Those embeddable features ease tasks such as managing product catalogs and offering discounts. 

“In an economy where big brands are competing more fiercely than ever to acquire customers, they need to pick and choose what they need to boost the top-line, without the compromise of a complete platform overhaul,” said Kaz Nejatian, chief operating officer and vice president of product at Shopify.

Shopify announced the update to Shop Pay today alongside an expanded partnership with a company called Adyen NV. Netherlands-based Adyen provides a popular payment processing platform for online retailers. According to Shopify, its expanded partnership with the company seeks to make it easier for merchants to process customer purchases.

As part of their collaboration, Shopify and Ayden plan to roll out a new integration between their platforms later this year. The integration will help online retailers process purchases made using international financial services such as iDEAL, an e-commerce payments platform popular in the Netherlands.

Photo: Shopify