UPDATED 13:00 EDT / JUNE 27 2017

EMERGING TECH

Live payments are finally coming to virtual reality via Payscout app

Soon you’ll be able to buy stuff in virtual reality as easily as in the physical world.

Merchant payment transaction processing firm Payscout Inc. announced today its foray into the emerging industry of virtual reality commerce. The application, known as Payscout VR Commerce, will enable frictionless payments in VR experiences, allowing consumers to shop and purchase physical objects and have them delivered to their homes.

Payscout Chief Executive Officer Cleveland Brown described the launch as “a watershed moment for payments in VR” and that this platform represents the first live VR payment system of its type to officially launch on the market.

The app is immediately available on Google Cardboard, a mobile VR headset for Android smartphones, for merchants and developers alike. Using the commerce app, consumers will be able to make purchases within the VR experience without needing to remove their headset. This is an important feature because the entire draw of a VR experience is its immersion and needing to take off a headset to enter information or make purchases immediately ruins that immersion.

Payscout’s platform is designed to allow merchants to move consumers from a VR experience – in this case: a 360-degree video – and into a virtual store designed to mimic the natural experience of being in a store to buy products. Payscout wants this to allow merchants to deliver an engaging, active medium for consumers to make purchases combined with a seamless way to pay.

As part of its announcement, Payscout handed out a Google Cardboard headset to audience members at the 2017 Money2020 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Already loaded into the app is an advertisement and store for Body Language Sportswear, an Internet retailer merchant based in Los Angeles. Upon selecting that merchant, the user gets transported to 360-degree video advertisement portraying the day in the life of a “Body Language Believer.” After that, the app loads the user into the virtual store.

Within the virtual store, consumers can then explore the product interactively – rotate items, enlarge them and view them in greater detail. Also included is a menu-driven checkout experience, which will securely confirm the purchase and uses payment credentials and shipping details set by the user.

After successfully processing the payment transaction, Payscout VR Commerce then interfaces to the merchant’s fulfillment center with all of the necessary order details. From there, the object of interest can be shipped directly to the user’s front door without further ado.

The Payscout app is also integrated with Visa Checkout Online, a service of Visa Inc. This will allow users to register payment credentials within the digital wallet or access their existing VCO account. By integrating with Visa, the app can use all of the security and ease of payment that the credit card company provides its own customers.

The Payscout VR Commerce app for Google Cardboard is officially available today in the Google Play Store and the company has plans to adapt the technology for iOS and additional VR platforms soon. “We’ve seen many prototypes and simulations of VR shopping, but this is the first time anyone can experience real commerce in VR,” Brown said.

There are already a lot of prototypes for VR payments. London-based Worldpay unveiled a VR “credit card swiping” demo for processing payments as a proof-of-concept in May. Alibaba Group Holdings demonstrated a VR payment technology that has users nod to make purchases and Ikea also experimented with a VR payment demo for furniture in 2016. More recently, Nokia Corp. revealed a VR advertisement that, once launched, will allow consumers to make purchases.

The general availability of Payscout’s VR Commerce app makes it one of the first general e-commerce apps to emerge for merchants using virtual reality.

Image: Payscout

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