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Top Payment Tips for eCommerce

Maximizing your eCommerce revenue requires a deep understanding of consumers’ payment behaviors and trends. Providing relevant, convenient and secure solutions to optimise the shopping experience is essential to generate revenue. Consumers don’t want to think about online payments; they simply want them to happen quickly and securely, every time.

Here we offer actionable tips to help retailers capture more spending, save on transaction costs and give customers the seamless payment experience they expect.

1. Understand how your customers shop

We’ll talk about the type of payments later, but while we’re talking about how people are shopping, you should also optimise the other channels your customers use.

For example, 90% of Instagram users follow a business account, so it’s worthwhile creating Shoppable Posts where products are tagged in posts, stories and reels. This simplifies the buying journey and helps convert social engagement into sales.

New Visual Search Technology is also changing the way we shop, allowing users to easily find the products they want, or something similar, using just pictures. In categories such as home decor and fashion, this tech closes the gap between seeing and buying, and makes it easier for you to convert browsing into a sale.

2. Accept more than cash and cards

Digital wallets, mobile payments, cryptocurrencies – the use of alternative payment methods (APMs) is on the rise. According to a TrueLayer analysis, all alternative payment methods are expected to grow in Europe over the next four years. At the same time, cards, which represent around 41% of ecommerce payments now[MS1] [SO2] , are expected to fall to 33% by 2026. Accepting a wide range of payment methods opens up a broader set of options for your customers and attracts customers that may otherwise have not made a purchase. Payment Orchestration makes it easy to add new payment types the process is easy. Our platform, Velocity, offers access to more than 410 payment methods globally and is integrated directly into your existing networks via API or mobile SDK, so you can unify the payment experience across all channels, including web, mobile, call centres and more.

3. Think about returns and exchanges now

Unfortunately for retailers, 30% of customers will return what they bought online during the holidays, and the vast majority do so within the first month of the post-holiday season. It’s essential to have a plan in place for handling (and reducing) returns. Shoppers appreciate being able to choose between receiving store credit, exchanges, or a refund, but the most important thing is to be straightforward about what you offer. You may not be able to avoid returns, but by adopting a customer-centric, clearly communicated return policy, you will build trust and lasting loyalty with your customers.

4. Be ready to trade cross border

With more than half of all shoppers making purchases from foreign websites, cross-border sales represent a significant opportunity for business growth. If you don’t already have a solution to accept local payment methods from international shoppers, you need one now. Velocity makes this simple thanks to its Multi-Currency Pricing (MCP) capabilities, which allow consumers to reprice products or services into their preferred payment currency, while Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) gives a choice of paying in the original pricing currency, or the currency of their credit or debit card were different.

5. Subscriptions

According to a recent survey, holiday seasons are big for businesses with gift subscriptions, with 63% of consumers reporting they would consider giving subscriptions as a gift, and 70% interested in receiving subscriptions as a gift themselves. Subscriptions are an effective way for a business to support their growth objectives and expand into new markets at any time of year, but the growth of a subscription product can be hindered if customers’ preferred payment methods aren’t accepted. Retailers, therefore, need to understand customer preferences and integrate preferred methods into payment options.

6. Offset the cost of sales

We know consumers are under huge financial pressures, but so are retailers. Business-level cost pressures are the highest they have been in decades. Payment Orchestration can help boost your bottom line and offset some of those costs by automatically routing transactions to lower-cost payment processing options. It allows transactions to be routed to the best-performing payment service provider (PSP), which can help boost conversion rates as well as reduce costs.

7. Watch out for fraud

Always looming out there, fraudsters are typing to take advantage of weaknesses in your systems. Using a fraud identification and mitigation tool allows you to stop fraudulent transactions while permitting legitimate transactions to go through.

8. Minimize lost revenue due to chargebacks

Unfortunately for merchants, customer disputes are increasing – and so are the costs associated with them. Experts estimate that chargebacks add up to $80 billion in total annual costs, and almost 80% of disputed transactions can be traced back to friendly fraud. While merchants have the right to dispute illegitimate chargebacks, doing so is more difficult than it sounds. Crafting an effective dispute takes significant resources. Merchants rarely win DIY chargeback responses; according to data from industry leader Chargebacks911, the average net recovery rate for chargebacks is just 12%. Working with a platform like Chargebacks911 can improve your win rate by as much as twice the industry average.

9. Add acquirers to maximise approvals

Don’t let outages and false declines impact your ability to serve your customers. A Payment Orchestration Platform allows retailers to add multiple payment processors, which minimises the risk of a single payment processor and simplifies the complex payment process. Through intelligent routing and built-in fail-over options, payments are routed to the processor most likely to approve a transaction or provide the lowest cost. It also ensures that, if a processor goes down, there is an alternative. It means every payment is processed, every time.

10. Add split payments to allow customers to pay across multiple payment types

Adding the option of splitting payments across multiple payment types gives customers the option to pay for items they may struggle to pay for in one go, and so is particularly helpful for large ticket items.

11. Target cart abandonment

When a customer leaves a purchase incomplete, having the ability to re-engage them to complete the transaction is a win. Pay-by-link allows you to send a link directly to the customer at the point of sale, so they can simply click the link to complete the transaction and you get the sale. It can also be provided by call centers to assist in completing the transaction.

12. Dynamically present only the relevant payment types for customers

Using Payment Orchestration, retailers can easily adapt the checkout process to integrate new payment methods, display amounts in local currencies, remove irrelevant fields and even direct transactions to payment partners who specialise in the customer’s geographic region.

While consumer spending is expected to drop and there are pressures across the board, payments don’t have to be one of them. By offering a variety of payment types, maximizing approvals and minimizing costs through Payment Orchestration, you can deliver a customer experience that builds loyalty and encourages repeat purchases.

As an expert Payment Orchestration partner, CellPoint Digital helps retailers get ahead during challenging times.

Boost revenue and simplify operations with our Payment Orchestration solution

Elevate your business with our Payment Orchestration Platform. Streamline operations, access global providers, and optimise processing times. Benefit from intelligent routing, fraud prevention, and real-time analytics. Request a demo to revolutionise your payment systems.