Toys R Us offers option to order online, pay in store for holidays

Toys R Us Inc., in a relentless race to win this holiday season, is now giving shoppers the option to reserve gifts online and pay for them in a brick-and-mortar store.

Touted as a tool for customers who don’t have a credit card, shoppers can now click the “Pay in Store” option during checkout, reserve the order, and pay for it at any Toys R Us or Babies R Us stores within 48 hours. After payment, the purchase is then shipped to the shopper’s home.

That’s just the latest effort by merchants to attract customers by offering as many shopping options as possible. Retail chains have extending all manner of holiday promotions to get people to open their wallets, including price-matching and same-day delivery.

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Toys R Us has already extended free layaway until Dec. 16 and rolled out a reservation service so parents can nab popular playthings early and avoid frantic last-minute searching during the holidays.

Best Buy Co. and Target Corp. are taking direct aim at Web merchants with online price matching, partly to grab customers who now use their stores as showrooms -- to check out items and then go buy them more cheaply on the Internet.

Wal-Mart, which already allows shoppers to buy items online and pay for them in cash in stores, is extending layaway and has slashed the price for opening a layaway account.

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