Have you ever been deep in your social media feed when suddenly a really well targeted ad pops up and you swipe or tap to “buy”? We take issue with those three letters in quotations, ”b-u-y”. The problem is those are the wrong letters. It should actually say, “shop”, because that’s the action that takes place after the swipe up, or tap. What follows is more swipes, wait, then typing, then waiting, and if you make it to the end of the labyrinth, a purchase. But why isn’t it a true ‘buy’ inside the app? Why can’t you 1-click (or 2-click) buy via swipe or tap in these apps? Quite frankly, it’s taken far too long to solve for this. And in some you can! Read more about our partnership with Instagram here.

The reason it's not a b-u-y is because there's a lot of infrastructure that doesn't exist to connect individual applications to the vast number of ecommerce platforms and Merchants on the internet, until now. Violet enables apps to add native checkout with an elegant, headless REST API. Social media apps, websites, live-streaming, link in bio, can all have their own checkout experiences without the headache of ecommerce integrations.

What about other types of apps and experiences?

Imagine being in an immersive Virtual World. You walk up to a beautiful mall and decide to go shopping. Products are shown everywhere. You find something you like. Maybe you’ve been there before. You’re ready to purchase. What happens? Today you would have to pop open a browser window and try get someone to type in or audibly say their billing and shipping info. Same goes for Augmented Reality and even voice applications. The way we execute actual transactions was built for the innovations we saw 25 years ago, which introduced the ability to purchase in a web browser and eventually a mobile app. Beyond that, it hasn’t evolved too much outside of Amazon.

It’s no secret that the original innovator of the 1-click buy is Amazon. They patented the technology almost 20 years ago. It’s one of the many tools in Amazon’s tool shed of growth and innovation. Henry Davis, COO of Glossier, previously provided some lucid analysis, (as summarized by Ailsa Sherrington from TNW), into the ways in which ecommerce has really only seen step-change innovation from Amazon over the last 15 years or so. He presents one version of this paradigm that states Amazon’s approach is based on: fewer clicks, fewer dollars, and fewer delivery days. We agree. We want to focus on the fewer clicks part.

We've seen the rise of Fast and Bolt, providing 1-click checkout on an individual website, but what about inside of a different application? Can a company or app that doesn't hold any inventory implement one of those tools? With Violet, the answer is 'yes'.

A #noclickout world

We're on a mission to make click out experiences a thing of the past. Could you imagine being in a mall, seeing a product you like, and then being told, “Sorry, we don’t sell that here. You need to go across the street, check in with the concierge, fill out a form like you're at the doctor's office, and then you can buy it”? It would never work IRL. It’s time we fix it in the digital world. This is why we’re pushing for a world with #noclickout and a Universal Checkout API.