Just a few years ago, buying insurance for your small business was much different than it is today. The process looked a little like this:

  • You call an insurance broker and give them your SMB information in order to receive a quote.
  • Your broker shops around different insurance carriers until they find an appropriate policy for you.
  • Your broker fills out an application on your behalf. You either share your credit card information over the phone or mail in a check.
  • You receive your policy documents via email or direct mail from your broker.

At Thimble, the process is radically different.

  • Using the Thimble app or website, you enter your profession, zip code, coverage limit, and the dates you’d like to be covered.
  • You get a quote and can purchase your policy with a single click, all in under 60 seconds.

Apple Pay integration

We’re obsessed with making it easy to get small business insurance, which includes making the payment experience as seamless as possible. That’s why we now accept Apple Pay for our on-demand policies.

The benefits of accepting Apple Pay have been well documented by Apple, adopting companies, and users alike. Some of these include:

  • Faster checkout. No need to pull out your wallet and input credit card information.
  • A more secure experience. Every transaction requires Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode, and we never receive or store card numbers.
  • Better conversion. Abandonment decreases when a customer is able to purchase using one tap.

How did we do it?

We, like so many other companies and startups (Target, Lyft, Postmates, and DocuSign to name a few), partner with Stripe to securely process our payments. Stripe supports Apple Pay both on mobile apps and on the web, making the integration of Apple Pay seamless.

If you partner with Stripe and are interested in integrating Apple Pay into your experience to process your payments, check out Stripe’s helpful documentation here: https://stripe.com/docs/apple-pay.

It’s been about a month since we started accepting Apple Pay for our on-demand policies and the initial response has been even better than expected. While not yet statistically significant, about a quarter of new app users have purchased their policy with Apple Pay.

What’s next for Thimble payments?

  • Accept Apple Pay for Thimble Monthly in iOs.
  • Accept Apple Pay on mobile web.
  • Accept Google Pay for Android. We want to bring the same one-tap checkout experience to our Android users.

The landscape in which people buy financial products is rapidly changing, and insurance is no different. We are committed to bringing the best possible experience to our users, and the continual improvements to the payment process are just the start.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rich Loeffler is a Senior Product Manager at Thimble who works across both the customer and partner focused experiences. Previously, Rich was an early employee at Jet.com (acquired by Walmart) where he also worked on the product team. In his spare time, Rich can be found somewhere on a beach or kicking a ball around on a soccer pitch.