Amazon’s patented one-click purchasing system was called 1-Click.
The system allowed a customer who had already stored payment and shipping information to place an order with a single action, rather than re-entering details or moving through a conventional shopping-cart checkout. Amazon developed the process in 1997 and received a U.S. patent in September 1999.
1-Click became a landmark feature of early e-commerce because it targeted checkout friction. Fewer steps could reduce the chance that shoppers abandoned their carts before completing a purchase. Amazon also owned the “1-Click” trademark, so the exact styling matters less here than identifying the branded system by its canonical name.
The technology became controversial when Amazon sued Barnes & Noble over its similar “Express Lane” checkout. Amazon licensed 1-Click to Apple in 2000 for use in Apple’s online stores. The U.S. patent expired on September 11, 2017, after which similar one-click checkout experiences became easier for other services to offer. “One-Click” describes the general idea, but the stored answer, “1-Click,” is Amazon’s branded name.