Goran Abramović, CEO and Co-Founder of Aplauz, explains how online payments can be a winning game for everybody as long as consumers get the chance to control their online spending, retain their data privacy, and shop with trust
Have you ever discovered unexpected charges on your credit card? Most of us have. Unfortunately, it happens a lot.
Just last month, my neighbour gave her son access to her credit card to buy an online game he liked. Or so she thought. When she discovered the many unexpected extra charges, her jaw dropped.
She questioned her son, who was just as surprised. He had no idea that he had spent so much money with his mother’s credit card. While playing, he accidentally agreed to a subscription and accepted a few in-game purchases.
It was an expensive lesson in trust. Next time, they would both be more careful with online payments to avoid bad surprises.
Suspicious of online payments
This scenario is played out across the world every day.
It’s not just about kids who like gaming. Finding unexpected charges on a credit card statement has happened to many digital citizens who spend a part of their life online. And it always feels unfair.
They simply want to enjoy their digital lives, but feel like they are taking a risk every time they enter their credit card details online.
According to Newzoo research on Esport Spenders in Europe, ‘over half (53%) digital spenders in the UK claimed they’d cancelled or backed out of an online payment. Of those who cancelled, 27% indicated that privacy concerns (relating to personal data) were their main reason for doing so’.
In particular, the Gen Z has become suspicious of online payments. To protect themselves, digital citizens have become more and more careful of their online spending, opting for what is available for free instead of taking the risk to pay more than they expect to.
Next to being worried about how much they spend, digital citizens are not comfortable sharing private information with a faceless screen. Why would they be? Compare it to offline payments: a shopper goes to a store, chooses what they want, and briefly touches their card to the machine. They don’t have to give away any personal data, making the transaction easy, transparent, and fair.
What if online payments could be the same?
Empowering digital citizens with choice
Aplauz is changing the rules of the game. The company was founded in 2020 with the mission to make every online payment a conscious choice: easy, transparent, and fair. We want to empower everyone to enjoy their online lives, in full transparency and without any financial risk.
That’s why the Netherlands-based Aplauz team goes above and beyond to ensure the customer’s freedom to make conscious spending choices.
They can simply pop into a local convenience store to buy an Aplauz voucher with the exact credit value they want. When they use it to pay on any website that accepts Aplauz payments, only the prepaid value on the voucher can be spent. Unexpected charges are not possible. And because the voucher holds no personal data, the user’s privacy is also safe.
Aplauz users are always conscious of their spending. That makes them also more willing to spend because they know they will not lose control in any way.
Aplauz is already available in over 2000 convenience stores in Switzerland and we will be rolling it out across Europe this year, to give millions of digital citizens a fair way to pay.
In this game, we all win
Aplauz is not only about empowering the end-user. For online merchants, it is a fantastic customer acquisition tool to sell to the many customers that were out of reach until now, like people who:
want to protect themselves against unexpected charges;
are reluctant to share their personal and financial data;
do not have access to traditionally accepted online payment methods, e.g. credit cards.
Offering Aplauz as a payment method is in fact a social responsibility statement that shows the merchant cares about the relationship with their customers.
With 30 million visitors every week, Aplauz’s retail distribution network across Europe provides access to prime advertising space for Aplauz merchant partners. We also offer the opportunity to run joint marketing campaigns through email, social media or online advertising.
What we are most proud of is that Aplauz is a win-win-win model:
digital citizens win back freedom of choice in their spending;
partner merchants win the trust of customers;
convenience stores win traffic to their stores.
So, ready to join the winning game? Contact us to add Aplauz to your checkout.
This article is part of the Payment Methods Report 2021 – Latest Trends in Payment Preferences, a comprehensive overview of the payment methods in scope for 2021, as well as best practices for checkout optimisation and customer conversion by addressing digital transformation, security, and localisation.
About Goran Abramović
Goran is the CEO and Co-Founder of Aplauz and Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Own. Solutions Group, the Aplauz parent company. For the past 17 years, Goran has been engaged in building bridges between physical and digital commerce using the latest available technology as foundation pillars. Working in close collaboration with the Own.Solutions physical stores network, Goran is passionate about making convenience stores an active player in digital commerce transformation. Aplauz is a great way to achieve that and a unique tool to reach an untapped customer base for digital merchants.
About Aplauz
Aplauz is a prepaid digital credit that empowers people to make conscious spending. Aplauz vouchers can be bought at convenience stores and used to make online payments without any of the traditional online payment methods, and without having a bank account. It is ideal for those who don’t own a credit card, or who don’t want to disclose financial details, to security buy online while staying in control of their spending.
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