Helium Lifts Shopping Cart Woes

A new shopping cart solution is taking the transaction process to new heights.

Helium, which was just launched by ecommerce analytics provider Freshplum, is a shopping cart that is built for small businesses. By using the Stripe Connect platform, websites can perform direct transactions without waiting for approval by a payments processor.

While an online store traditionally requires a website, shopping cart, gateway, merchant account, an SSL certificate, and an understanding of PCI compliance and Web development, Helium enables site owners to start collecting online payments with only a website and a Stripe account. In an effort to simplify the process further, Helium handles credit card transactions, file hosting, order management and can be leveraged to sell a variety of digital and physical goods - all with no programming experience or server-side code required.

"Creating a simple way to collect payments is a step toward our larger vision of making it easier to sell things online," said Freshplum CEO Sam Odio. "We've been working with larger merchants over the last year to help them learn from their data and optimize their sales process. We've found that with our smaller clients, the problem often lies in the simple mechanics of their shopping cart."

Website owners without a dedicated programming staff will be happy to know that Helium can be integrated into a website by pasting a line of code, selecting the checkout options and adding a "Buy Now" button to transaction pages. Then, customers have the ability to purchase products without being redirected to another page. For these services, Helium charges a flat rate of 2 percent per transaction in addition to Stripe's fees.