Google wants your money

Search engine leader Google has launched its payment service in the UK, lining itself up against established players such as eBay's PayPal.

The service, which launched in the US last summer and is called Google Checkout, works with its search advertising program AdWords. Any retailer that uses the AdWords service also has the option of having a Google Checkout icon on its advert.

Shoppers are able to store payment details centrally, so that the purchase process is reduced to a couple of clicks when buying goods from participating retailers.

When a transaction goes through the service, the retailer is charged a fee but Google is offering a discount deal whereby £10 of orders are processed for free for every £1 spent on advertising with the search giant. Additionally, Google is offering free processing of transactions until the end of 2007.

silicon.com Retail & Leisure

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One of the 40 new sign-ups to the service is a shopping portal called speedycamel.co.uk, which operates as an online marketplace where shoppers can haggle over prices of homewares and gifts. The site, which has big name brands such as Halfords and Jessops as retail partners, has had the Google Checkout payment mechanism embedded by its site designer big:group.

Speedycamel retail director, Graham Hoyle, told silicon.com: "The service makes sense for us, as 70 per cent of our traffic comes through Google. Checkout makes the buying process much easier for our customers. It's a case of go, browse, buy. It brings to our site the association with the Google brand and lends a layer of credibility."

Google has promised to make good on unauthorised card purchases and gives shoppers the option of hiding their email addresses from retailers to stop them being sent unwanted spam.

The search engine company will be heartened by a piece of research that appears to support its one-login approach to online shopping. According to research house TNS, 47 per cent of people use between four and 10 different passwords. One in three forget their password after signing up to a service and so never use the service again.