With the ability to pay online- Teens are yet to become the new Millennials. The “Z” Millennials!
While it is a known fact that at any given time of the day, teens are the most committed e-commerce visitors — Teens are still considered by merchants as“visitors” and not potential buyers. With solutions like ‘Amazon teen’ and ‘AskToPay’ type of tech, that could change during 2019.
In a summary report of 2017 US Online Sales, it showed that kids and teens (Generation Z) were responsible for at least 5%of the $410B Online Sales.
Nowadays Teens are said to be 20% of Snap users, and are frequent visitors to online retailers , mainly fashion, cosmetics and gadgets websites and apps. In fact, teens are responsible for turning companies like Epic Games (The owners of Fortnite) to unicorns. They did this without the ability to actually pay, and it can be attributed to a phenomenon that many parents know too well — “the nagging effect.”
Most parents still won’t give their kids Pre-Paid Credit cards, mainly because they they want control in their teen’s online purchases. Therefore, teens as well as kids, get their parents to pay for their online requests when they get home from work, after nagging several times.
This “nagging effect” should not be underestimated, as it was responsible for over $20 Billions in Online Sales in 2017 in the US alone!
The complexity of making teens online “buyers” made advertisers, as big retailers as well as Snap ignore Gen Z and focus only on “Millennials and up” who own Credit cards.
Large retailers and advertisers who normally focus their marketing efforts on Millennials and up who own credit cards, have recognized the evolution in the market, with Amazon being the first corporate retailer to adjust their sales solution. “Amazon Teen” was created in 2017, and enables any Amazon user to delegate “sub-user” to their kids so that they can make purchase requests. Once parents approve the request, the items are purchased.
However, while giant ecom operations like Amazon, can manage to make parents download apps, open accounts and register before delegating users to their kids, this may be much more difficult for smaller, less known operations who also sell to teens. In fact most e-commerce sites and Apps, including Snap don’t even bother targeting Generation X, whom they don’t consider buyers.
Giving teens the power to buy, and turning them into the “New Millennials” was our vision at AskToPay. We patented the solution that enabled a whole new sales channel, with an API that can be simply integrated into any e-commerce site or app. The solution allows teens to request payment from their parents, via a short selfie video which is sent directly to the parent via What’sApp, SMS, or Messenger. The parent opens the link which displays in an organized manner, the video, the e-com site, and the desired items.
Fast approval is likely with AskToPay, as it has several advantages for the parents as well. First and foremost, they are in-the-know, and have control over the payments. They do not need to download any app, open an account, register anywhere, or partake in any other time consuming activity. At the end of the day, it saves the parent what they lack most — time.
AskToPay solution was recently awarded as of the most innovative fintech solutions by MaterCard, and has already proven that it increases sales to teens for online apps and webistes by 30%..
2019 will surely be an exciting year for teens as they receive the new classification of “Z” Millennials and the power that comes with it, and for the merchants alike who will have the doors of a new sales channel opened before them, with increased sales conversion at no additional costs. .
