With their one-click checkout solution, users pay a 0.75% charge for executing an online payment from their bank through open banking

Not many consumers are aware that every time they make a purchase online, there are hidden eCommerce fees in the form of payment commissions to cards and e-wallets that are included in the funds moving from their bank accounts to the business accounts of merchants.

According to Simone Martinelli, founder and CEO at U.K.-based checkout startup Volume, these surcharges from third-party providers like MasterCard, Visa and Stripe can be anywhere from 2% to 7% of the sale, forcing merchants to raise their fees which in turn impacts the price an end consumer pays.

To address this problem, the firm is leveraging the variable recurring payment (VRP) mandate for sweeping — an extension of the open banking payment initiation service which allows the automatic transfer of funds between a consumer’s own accounts — to provide online shoppers with a much lower bank rate at checkout, as part of its goal to drive transaction costs to zero.

With their one-click checkout solution, users pay a 0.75% charge for executing an online payment from their bank through open banking.

You end up paying $28.75 for a product and the merchant receives $28.65. The 10 cents difference, which is our fee, is 3x cheaper than Stripe and 10x cheaper than PayPal, Martinelli told PYMNTS in an interview.

On the other hand, merchants, who are left with higher fees when consumers pay with cards and must wait several weeks to receive payments, are paid faster through the open banking infrastructure that eliminates third party intermediaries.

It’s literally one-click and super secure and that is what every retail customer experience should look like in 2022, he said.