How Peer To Peer Financial Applications Can Revolutionize E-Commerce

I use Wikipedia at least once a week and of late I have been asked to provide a small $2.75 donation to help keep Wikipedia running. The site is tremendous, it provides a massive amount of accurate information all for entirely free. In my opinion it is one of the best sites on the internet. So whats stopping me from donating?

I’ve been putting off donating to Wikipedia for at least five years, every time I actually click the donate now button I just get lazy and don’t feel like putting in my debit card information.

E-commerce sites like Amazon understand that in order to make money online you need to make it easy for people to buy things. This exactly why they make store your credit card. If you had to punch in your card information and your address every time you were ordering something from Amazon you’d never use it.

Jordan Belfort’s Straight Line Selling methodology describe five core elements of making the sale. One of these is lowering the action threshold and every E-commerce organizations as do a horrible job, in fact compared to in person transactions E-commerce organizations raise the action threshold of their customers by making them take additional steps (full credit card number, 3 digit security code on the back, full name, zip code, address, etc.) before they actually buy something.

If everyone who used Wikipedia didn’t need to go through the hassle of punching in all of their financial information Wikipedia wouldn’t be strapped for cash. E-commerce sites need to lower the action threshold at the point of sale, but how?

Millions of people use apps like Venmo and CashApp everyday. These apps already store our financial information and unlike traditional E-commerce every time I want to send someone money I don’t have to do a million things before hand. Peer to peer translation applications already have the infrastructure for enabling quick and (relatively) secure private financial transactions.

If Venmo, CashApp etc. all offered E-commerce plugins where a vendor could receive payments for their goods and services everyones action threshold would be lowered. Imagine how much easier it would be to buy something if all you had to do was pick up your phone and scan a QR code. No one likes to repeat themselves and every time we have to punch in the same debit/credit card information over and over again we are repeating ourselves.

From Wikipedia and Patreon to your very own E-commerce site can all be improved by lowering customers action threshold. One of the easiest ways to do this is by having existing 3rd party financial transaction companies expand their portfolio by creating E-commerce plugins. Financial transactions are the rate limiting factor in terms of the internets utility, speed and economic growth.