In Brief: Free Offer for Google Checkout

Google Inc. is offering its Checkout payment service free to merchants through yearend.

The promotion, which began Nov. 8, is available to existing and new merchant customers, Google said.

"We've built some great momentum in the last four months, and we'd like to continue to build on it," Benjamin Ling, the product leader for Checkout, said in an e-mail interview this month.

The service is normally 20 cents a transaction, plus 2% of the price of the purchase. Merchants that also use Google's AdWords search engine advertising service normally get $10 of free Checkout transactions for every $1 they spend on ads.

In an earlier promotion, it offered a $10 discount to consumers who used the service to buy $30 or more of merchandise at specific merchants. Unlike that promotion, the current one is "for merchants, not for shoppers," Mr. Ling said.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Bank technology
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER