Yesterday Google announced a host of new upgrades to it's Google Checkout service aimed at making online commerce even easier.  I've mentioned the benefit of using a service like Google Checkout in the past.  It lets you focus on other things while Google (or another company) takes care of the checkout part of the shopping process.

The new additions include:

Coupon Creation:  Google Checkout now offers merchants the ability to create dollar-off or percent-off coupons for their customers.  It even gives you the option of adding restrictions, such as limiting the coupon to once per customer.

Electronic Invoices:  Checkout merchants can also start sending invoices to customers by email.  The Google Checkout invoices include a link that allows your customers to pay you online using Google Checkout.

Website Integration:  Google has made it even easier to integrate Checkout into your existing site.  A simple HTML form is all that's need to send transactions from your site to Google Checkout.

Free Transaction Processing:  As part of a holiday promotion, Google was previously going to foot the processing fee for all transactions through the end of 2006.  The merchant response to this promotion was so overwhelming that Google has extended the free processing offer through the end of 2007.  No processing fees through 2007??  That's huge!

These upgrades make Google Checkout an even more attractive offer than it already was.  Google Checkout boasts thousands of merchants and an integrated account system.  If customers sign up for a Google Checkout account at one site they can use the same account at any participating site.

The free transaction processing alone is incentive enough to switch.  The other upgrades are just icing on the cake.