In the midst of gearing up for FinovateFall 2013 this September, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk with Finovate newcomer – and FinovateFall presenter – Zooz and their CEO, Oren Levy.

Zooz presented their Consumer Driven Payments Platform at FinvoateSpring this May. The company’s solution brings merchants and consumers closer by turning the mobile or online ad into an actionable first step toward a real transaction. Said TechCrunch in a review shortly after Zooz’s FinovateSpring appearance: “the big idea here is to (address) some of the challenges with e-commerce on mobile’s small screen … connecting that process to banner ads to increase click-to-buy conversions.”

Zooz was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Ra-anana, Israel. 

Finovate: Zooz has carved out its own niche in the world of e-commerce and m-commerce payments. All of that seems to culminate in your latest product, “In-Ad payments.” How has the reception been?

Oren Levy: When we founded Zooz we wanted to eliminate the friction of mobile checkout and create a seamless process for users and merchants. We realized that this pain point is even worse when it comes to mobile advertising, making it almost impossible to find a business model that is satisfactory for all stakeholders in the ecosystem. After revealing this at FinovateSpring we discovered that many people were just waiting for this solution. We’ve been getting incredible feedback and we have a very long waiting list of companies that want to take part in our pilot.

Finovate: I recently read a commentary on mobile monetization that emphasized looking beyond advertising. Zooz takes a completely different approach by leveraging the advertising itself. Why does this work?

Levy: It’s interesting to see that whether they’re inside a store or on a mobile device, people are still people. You have an entire segment of impulse buyers who see something they like and decide they want to have it, without too much planning or thinking. When these people see an ad with something they want and can complete a purchase within 3 seconds, instead of being redirected to another page, downloading an app, searching for a product, filling out a form etc. – that’s a game changer. You can look at it as a retailer’s way to accommodate Impulse buying outside the store. We feel that this can make a dramatic change in the business models that dominate the mobile advertising industry and its correlated with consumers’ expectations to enjoy a better, quicker experience across all platforms.

Finovate: One of the major challenges you set out to meet was the problem of cart abandonment. How big of a problem is this for online merchants and how far does the Zooz approach go toward solving it? 

Levy: Online shopping cart abandonment is stated to be around 94%, whereas on mobile we’re looking at 97%. We believe that many of these transactions can be saved with a “people first” experience and not one that is driven by merchants’ needs and development constraints. When you take out the unnecessary friction and deliver a quick and secure experience, users are more likely to make it to the “thank you” page.

Finovate: You’ve described the mobile commerce experience as “horrible, very long, and unfriendly” from the user perspective. How does Zooz technology work to change this to “pleasant, brief and engaging”?

Levy: We believe that the payment process should be very short and precise. The first thing we do to improve the experience is our secure One Tap Payment, across different merchant apps and sites. Entering credit card details is the most unpleasant part of the checkout so anything we can do to avoid asking for these details makes a huge difference. We facilitate multiple payment methods such as Klarna, Dwolla, Kiwi, Jumio, PayPal and more. By offering a variety of all these great solutions we give users more options and increase the chances that they will find a method they’re comfortable with. Moreover, our entire checkout is constantly monitored and optimized in terms of UX, according to user behavior and needs.

Finovate: One of the things that’s always interesting is when a company takes a core technology and then adapts it for a new use. This is to some degree the story of Zooz in-ad payments technology, isn’t it? 

Levy: Exactly. Zooz was founded to solve the problem of awkward commerce experience , and eventually we realized that the same problem that exists in ecommerce also exists when interacting with advertisements on mobile. When a consumer taps on an ad of something they are interested in they have to go through an excruciating process: redirected to a new web page, prompted to download an app or fill out a form, having to search for the product etc. We believe that our technology can introduce new business models to the mobile ad industry and change the way users interact with these ads.

Finovate: The in-ad payments solution is geared toward ad agencies rather than at software developers. The idea is for advertising agencies to just grab the technology and go. You are currently testing the technology with a few agencies. Can you give us any early reports about how they are feeling about the technology?

Levy: We’re still in early stages of our beta. We have a few supply side platforms which are working on integrations and we’ll be working with the ad networks to bring this whole ecosystem together. We hope to be able to share further information very soon.

Finovate: Zooz is currently more widely adopted in Europe than in the United States. Is there any chance that a broader testing or beta regime might accompany a bigger push to gain U.S. exposure to the technology?

Levy: We started out in Europe since the demand there was huge. We’ve recently raised our A round, led by Xseed Capital from California and that’s definitely a part of our strategy to have better reach in the United States as part of our global expansion. We’ve partnered with some incredible partners that enable us to offer extremely competitive fees in the U.S., since we see huge potential in this market. American consumers tend to be early adopters and very tech savvy so e-tailers and merchants will need to constantly innovate in order to keep up with their users. We’ve seen that our solution shows tremendous results in terms of boosting conversion rates and improving engagement and we hope to see the same exponential growth in the U.S., as we’ve seen in Europe.

Finovate: What can we expect to see from Zooz in the second half of 2013?

Levy: We have some very exciting product developments coming up, we plan to reveal some of them in the next Finovate conference. Of course we will continue our momentum in terms of geo-expansion and continue to add new payment methods and e-wallet integrations. Other than that, the In Ad Payments are switching to high gear so we definitely have our work cut out for us.

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To learn more about Zooz, visit their website at zooz.com or watch the company’s FinovateSpring 2013 demo here.