Amazon.com, the largest U.S.-based ecommerce retailer, obtained a U.S. (but not European Union) patent for “1-click” checkout in 1997 for payments connected to remotely stored credentials. Over time, Amazon would license its patent to other companies including Apple, and it would extend 1-click checkout to third-party sellers on the Amazon platform. However, it is PayPal that maintains the largest online merchant acquiring network for what it calls “one-touch” checkout. PayPal had one-touch checkout connections to 5 million online sellers at year-end 2016. That is more than the number ...