Since 2002, Fat Brain Toys has been selling fun, education-oriented toys, arts-and-crafts supplies, and other learning materials online. The company continually strives to make the checkout process both convenient and secure for their customers.
Making checkout convenient using HAQM Pay
Originally a web-only retailer, Fat Brain Toys has expanded to multiple brick-and-mortar stores and now designs and develops their own line of products. The company first used HAQM Pay on their website in 2014. “We saw it as a good opportunity to use HAQM’s established customer base and bring some of those conveniences to our own site,” says Mark Carson, Cofounder and President of Fat Brain Toys.
In 2024, HAQM and Stripe—a strategic payment partner of HAQM—announced that merchants using Stripe would be able to incorporate HAQM Pay as well. After consulting with the HAQM Pay team, Fat Brain Toys realized that their own development team could easily integrate HAQM Pay with their existing Stripe checkout solution. The merchant thus became an early adopter of HAQM Pay on Stripe.
Adding HAQM Pay in just six hours through Stripe
The Fat Brain Toys development team needed to read only four pages of documentation to understand how to add HAQM Pay to the company’s website through Stripe, and it took just six hours total to set up and launch the new option. HAQM Pay returned to the Fat Brain Toys website in February 2024.
This option was great for us because it was a quick implementation, it fits in our cart well, customers trust it, and it’s secure.
The process was so simple in part because the work needed to set up HAQM Pay through Stripe was the same as that for accepting credit cards, so the majority of it had already been done on the merchant’s website. “If we’re able to insert a shortcut in the customer’s journey to allow them to use a payment process that’s familiar to them, that’s a big win for us,” says Carson. “And that really did prove to be the case with HAQM Pay.”
Enhancing efficiency with HAQM Pay Checkout v2
HAQM Pay streamlines the checkout process for Fat Brain Toys’ customers by not requiring them to enter credit card information. “You simply log on to HAQM, and it brings you right to your order review page. You just look that over and hit submit. It’s that simple,” says McKinley.
Beyond adding convenience for shoppers, the HAQM Pay integration with Stripe has also improved shipping calculations for the merchant. Previously, Fat Brain Toys couldn’t see a shopper’s address until after the order was placed, prompting the company to charge a flat rate for shipping and sometimes incur losses as a result. After integrating HAQM Pay through Stripe, however, Fat Brain Toys could better estimate shipping costs due to the availability of extra information up front. “HAQM Pay pinpoints each sale perfectly for us,” says McKinley.
More information means a better overall view of the company’s operations. “The customer service and accounting teams are a lot happier that the integration of HAQM Pay and Stripe provides one spot where they can go and get all their numbers,” says McKinley. “They don’t have to open different places to get new numbers from here and new numbers from there.”
Meanwhile, the merchant can still customize the online checkout experience by choosing from several visual presentation options for HAQM Pay in the cart, including the button’s color and location. “We can put HAQM Pay right on our payment page,” says McKinley. “We have the whole cart experience that we control, and now we can control where this payment option shows up. It integrates really nicely for us.” The new HAQM Pay system is also optimized for mobile devices, so shoppers have a seamless checkout experience on their smartphones and tablets as well.
Fat Brain Toys understands that customer trust is a key factor in what people buy and where they’re comfortable shopping. “HAQM is a known quantity. They have millions of customers that are already configured and ready to go. If we can streamline checkout for them, that makes all our lives easier,” says Carson.
Continuing to offer a convenient customer experience
Fat Brain Toys is already seeing better sales numbers and receiving positive feedback from shoppers. The merchant plans to continue optimizing their checkout process with HAQM Pay so that it’s as simple and secure as possible.
“Because HAQM Pay is tightly integrated with Stripe, there’s not going to be much work for us to adapt to a future version,” says Carson. “That allows us to continue to be lean and put our time into moneymaking efforts elsewhere.”