As Bolt Network Grows, Merchants and Consumers See Tangible Benefits

Online checkout experiences are frustrating, complicated and confusing. Shoppers are asked to fill out financial information from one site to another, and from brand to brand. That’s why industry analysts estimate that around 60 to 70 percent of consumers abandon a purchase at the checkout.

With Bolt, the payment platform has made the checkout process simpler. Users download the app, and fill out their financial details once. There are no passwords or log-ins to remember, and as consumers shop from brand to brand, purchases are made with one click. What makes it work is that Bolt is a checkout platform, and not a plug-in.

The platform also offers fraud protection and payment processing integration. And its one-click checkout connects users to a “unified cross-brand network” that is rapidly growing, the company said. It is this self-generating network that Bolt sees as a win for merchants as well as consumers. In a research report published by Bolt, the company said “what benefits consumers is what draws together merchants. We’re bringing an Amazon-like network to all independent merchants, and Bolt is decentralizing commerce for retailers and shifting e-commerce forever.”

The authors of the report said there are 7.1 million people in the network and 50 million shoppers through existing merchant commitments and partnerships. The company said due to the growth of the platform, it expects one-third of all U.S. consumers to be using Bolt by the end of 2022, “and by the end of 2024, that will grow to two-thirds. By 2025, Bolt is projected to interact with eight out of every 10 shoppers in the United States.”

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Bolt said its merchants “benefit both at the top of the funnel and at the bottom” and said its network merchants “see a 25 percent or more increase in-store account creation, which helps retailers upsell, cross-promote and market directly to consumers, in addition to owning the relationship with their customers.”

“At the bottom of the funnel, we also see faster checkout conversion rates, meaning that Bolt is helping businesses close sales more effectively and efficiently,” the company said in its report, adding that Bolt merchants, on average, see a 75 percent conversion rate increase and a 39 percent repurchase rate as well as a 23 percent increase in average order volume.

Again, the key to these numbers and their growth is a unified network of merchants and consumers. “Every merchant [in the network] benefits because every customer will have a logged-in return shopper experience and each new merchant we register is many thousands more people who will have a frictionless experience at all of our merchants,” Bolt stated. “Similarly, every new Bolt merchant raises the value of the entire Bolt network. Every consumer on our network is able to shop more easily, not just on one site, but on all Bolt merchant sites.”

The company said its research found that 5 percent of all transactions are “network-driven,” which compares to less than 1 percent in January 2020.

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