For years, e-commerce has been gaining ground, accounting for more of retail sales as time went on. Then, during the early months of 2020, the pandemic drove about 10 years of e-commerce growth in 10 weeks. During that time, and for months afterward, more consumers went online to continue doing business with stores and restaurants that closed their brick-and-mortar locations and use e-commerce payment options in socially distanced ways.
Although the ways people are engaging with retail and restaurant businesses have changed, the need to optimize experiences to stay competitive has not. A 2020 Walker survey revealed that customer experience now ranks higher than price as a brand differentiator.
Offer these four e-commerce payment options to your clients for secure, customer-friendly online payments:
1. Processor-Agnostic Tokens
Payment tokens replace human-readable payment card data with randomly generated characters. Only payment networks have access to token vaults and provide processors with data as needed. Tokens secure data and make PCI compliance easier because cardholder data itself is never used or stored in the merchant’s point of sale (POS) system. However, tokens can also help improve customer experiences, for example, remembering customers using multiple channels, such as buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) or buy online return in store (BORIS) customers and making it easy to set up subscriptions and recurring payments.
Merchants may have shied away from tokens in the past because they were traditionally processor-specific. However, processor-agnostic tokens enable merchants to use them even if they change processors, allowing them to stay flexible and use the processor that provides them the best payment features and fees.
2. One-Click Payments
One-click payments give consumers the chance to make an online payment in the easiest way with minimal clicks. The e-commerce payment option that originated with Amazon allows customers to register, saving their account numbers, billing and shipping information, then make future payments with a single click. If customers want to ship to a different address or send a gift, they still need to go to a standard checkout page, but for most purchases, it adds convenience.
In addition, one-click payments are a secure way to pay using a smartphone; they can be set up to require a fingerprint or other authorization before the transaction occurs. They can also benefit merchants by decreasing the time from a buying decision or impulse to payment, which can minimize abandoned purchases and increase revenues.
3. Mobile Wallets
During the COVID-19 pandemic, mobile wallet and contactless payments increased in-store, but accepting mobile wallet payments, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, online can also offer consumers added convenience.
Much of e-commerce is actually mobile commerce (m-commerce). In fact, more than half of all e-commerce is expected to take place on mobile devices by the end of 2021. Merchants that accept mobile wallet payments when customers make m-commerce purchases on their smartphones can remove friction from many transactions. Additionally, accepting Apple Pay, Google Pay or other mobile wallets can make payments to universities or donations to nonprofits more convenient for patrons.
4. Website plugins and iFrames
Setting up online payments can be intimidating to merchants – but let them know there are easy and secure ways. One option is an iframe, a payments page provided by the payments company that includes all the essential elements for online payments. The merchant’s site directs customers to the iframe payment page, so security and PCI compliance is handled by the payments company, not the merchant.
Another option is using a payments plugin for WordPress websites (via WooCommerce) or other plugins (such as Magento) for other websites . Plugins add a payments gateway to the site with minimal integration or configuration by the merchant and create a checkout page for the website.
Additionally, merchants have options that allow them to match iframe or plugin payments pages to the look and feel of the rest of the website so that customers don’t sense a disconnect.
Give Your Clients the E-Commerce Payment Options They Need to Compete
With merchants’ focus on e-commerce payment options and competing on customer experiences, that’s where POS solution providers’ focus needs to be as well. Make sure your payment partners offer the e-commerce payment options your merchant clients need to succeed.
For more information, contact Datacap Systems.
