News

Magento adds Bill Me Later, PayPal Express features

May 14, 2014

At this week′s Imagine 2014 global e-commerce event, eBay Enterprise released the newest versions of Magento Enterprise Edition (version 1.14) and Community Edition (version 1.9). According to the company, both editions include a new Responsive Reference Design Theme, Bill Me Later as a payment option and PayPal Express Checkout improvements. Magento Enterprise Edition will also include faster search indexing. The upgrades make it easier and less expensive for retailers to provide seamless mobile experiences and provide new payment options for customers, improving conversion rates and sales, the company said in a press release.

“We are very excited about these two releases, as they build on our track record of advancing the out–of-box feature set of the core Magento code, and extending the performance and scalability of the fastest growing commerce platform in the Internet Retailer Top 500,” said Mark Lavelle, head of product and strategy, eBay Enterprise. “The latest Magento platform updates are a direct reflection of our commitment to help brands and retailers quickly and cost-effectively deliver a better shopping experience.”

Using CSS3, HTML5 and natively available jQuery, the new responsive design reference theme is built on modern technologies and incorporates best practices for mobile sites. Retailers are now able to obtain a tablet- and smartphone-friendly responsive site in approximately half the time as previously required, accelerating time to market.

“Mobile commerce is growing at a rapid pace and as an innovative company, it is important for us to respond quickly with a solution that enables better engagement with customers and a more consistent user experience, regardless of the device used,” said Christopher Murray, e-commerce leader in global e-transformation at 3M. “Magento’s new responsive design reference theme helped us achieve that on our direct commerce sites, while reducing our time to market by about 50 percent.”

The addition of Bill Me Later, a PayPal service and new option available on Magento Enterprise Edition 1.14 and Community Edition 1.9, helps retailers sell more inventory and capture up to 18 percent more sales by offering special financing options on qualified purchases. The improved PayPal Express Checkout allows merchants to offer a streamlined checkout experience which automatically tries alternative payment options if the customer’s credit card is declined, both increasing conversion rates and sales.

eBay Enterprise also announced the availability of new extensions for Magento merchants through the Magento Connect marketplace: the eBay Enterprise Affiliate Extension and eBay Enterprise Display Extension. The eBay Enterprise Display Extension offers seamless integration with all retailers’ existing Magento product feeds, enabling them to deliver personalized product-specific ads to retarget lost customers. With the eBay Enterprise Affiliate Extension, Magento merchants can now easily integrate with eBay Enterprise’s network of more than 200,000 affiliates and leverage best in class reporting tools to analyze, track and launch affiliate programs.