Social Media Buttons with Embedded Payment Capability
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Solution Overview
Problem
Consumers face inconvenience when trying to purchase products on social networking sites, as they often need to leave the platform to complete a transaction, leading to potential lost sales for merchants.
Innovation Solution
Embedding payment capabilities within social media buttons, such as the 'Pin it' button on Pinterest, allows users to purchase products directly from the social networking site by leveraging existing payment services like PayPal, enabling seamless transactions without navigating away from the platform.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If consumers use traditional purchase processes on social networking sites, then they can discover and share products, but they must leave the platform to complete transactions, resulting in lost sales
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the payment processing functionality with the social networking platform by embedding payment buttons directly within the social media interface. This merging allows users to complete transactions without leaving the platform, eliminating the need to navigate to external merchant sites and thereby increasing purchase completion rates.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a payment processing intermediary that bridges the social networking platform and merchant transaction systems. This intermediary enables seamless payment processing within the social media environment, allowing consumers to purchase products discovered on the platform without breaking the user experience flow.
2Loss of time
If consumers are redirected to merchant sites for purchases, then transactions can be completed, but time is lost navigating away and returning to the social networking site
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-positioning payment buttons and processing capabilities within the social networking interface before the purchase decision is made. This allows users to complete transactions immediately upon discovering a product, eliminating the need to navigate away and return, thereby reducing time loss while maintaining efficient transaction processing.
3Ease of operation
If payment processing is integrated into social media buttons, then purchases can be made directly on the platform, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses an intermediary payment processing layer that handles the complexity of transaction management, security, and merchant integration behind the scenes. This intermediary absorbs the system complexity while presenting a simple, unified payment button interface to users, thereby maintaining ease of operation without exposing the underlying architectural complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for facilitating the purchase of an item on a social networking website are described. Merchants can embed payments in buttons displayed on social networking websites to enable payments at the point of discovery, such as on Pinterest® or Facebook®. As the items associated with the buttons are shared further, the embedded payment capability follows the shared items. For example, a Pinterest® pin has the payment capability embedded within it so as the pin gets re-pinned in the Pinterest® platform, shared on blogs, shared on platforms like Facebook®, or surfaces on Google® Search, the payment capability is also available on those platforms. In some instances, open standards such as oEmbed or Open Graph are used to create the buttons with the payment capability and make creation of the buttons simpler for merchants.