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Online shoppers are liking those speedy checkout options

Visa Checkout hits 20 million users, while other parts of the mobile payments world -- looking at you, mobile wallets -- continue to lag.

Ben Fox Rubin Former senior reporter
Ben Fox Rubin was a senior reporter for CNET News in Manhattan, reporting on Amazon, e-commerce and mobile payments. He previously worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and got his start at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Ben Fox Rubin
2 min read
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Visa Checkout, Amazon Payments and PayPal One Touch have all reported solid growth this year.

Manuel Blondeau/Corbis via Getty Images

Apple Pay so far hasn't inspired people to burn their wallets, but there's one type of newer digital payment that's gaining traction.

Visa on Thursday said Visa Checkout now has over 20 million enrolled customers. That's double the 10 million of around the same time last year, but still a fraction of Visa's 2.5 billion total issued cards.

With the announcement, Visa becomes the third major online checkout service to report growth this year. These services, which include PayPal One Touch and Amazon Payments, let folks pay for stuff online without needing to constantly type in their card information, addresses or log-ins. Cutting out these steps makes it easier and faster for people to finish a purchase online or on mobile, which is good news for both customers and retailers.

"The numbers on the consumer side are accelerating," said Sam Shrauger, Visa's senior vice president of digital solutions. "I think we feel pretty good about our trajectory."

While the adoption numbers are still small in the bigger scheme of the banking and credit card industries, they show that these three companies may have found at least one useful new payment service, after tech and payments companies whipped up dozens of apps and options for consumers that may just be confusing people. Mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, meanwhile, still face slow and low adoption as many shoppers see no need to stop using cash and cards.

Samsung Pay last month agreed to partner with Visa Checkout, which may help Samsung build adoption. Google's Android Pay made a similar deal with Visa last year.

In February, PayPal said 50 million of its customers signed up for One Touch, up from 21 million about a year earlier, and Amazon Payments said 33 million customers used its Pay with Amazon service since it launched, up from 23 million. These numbers, though, may not be directly comparable, since each company is likely calculating them differently.

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