Visa have officially launched Rightcliq, a new social commerce service that allows US shoppers to get second opinions from their Facebook and email contacts on potential purchases – and then buy them.
Rightcliq is essentially a social bookmarking service – like Best Buy’s universal wishlist Giftag service with an image/price grabber to facilitate comparison shopping combined with an autofill credit card payment feature – from card details stored with Rightcliq (not necessarily Visa).
The web-browser plugin-powered service from Visa is also partnering online retailers (1-800 flowers, Barnes & Noble, Avis…) to offer users of Rightcliq special discounts, and offers tracking services for online purchases.
Check out the screenshots and the video below – but in a nutshell what Rightcliq does is create a browser bookmarklet that saves selected items to a private online “wishpace” that can be shared with friends to get feedback on shopping ideas, and from where members can compare and buy bookmarked items.
In other words, Rightcliq is a social version of PayPal.
Whilst the Rightcliq site design and navigation are well, different, and the plugin heavy-handedly brands your browser with Visa – Rightcliq is an interesting, and potentially useful service. It’s also a concept that other financial service providers could, and we think, should build on – but perhaps in a less intrusive way. A useful build for Visa would be to offer members Visa payment card protection services (which require registering all your cards anyway), and perhaps add in a price comparison engine.
Should all retail banks and card providers be looking to offer similar social shopping services on their secure websites to drive transactions and loyalty?
Warren Knight thanks Paul Marsden for anothe great article