2023 eCommerce Trends: Easing the Path to Payment Completion

Customers want to enjoy shopping. But creating an exceptional customer experience isn’t easy. It’s a combination of many factors—all of which are put to the test on the checkout page. Sometimes, the last impression means just as much as the first: 55% of online shoppers say they’d quit a purchase mid-process due to checkout friction.

Luckily, the eCommerce payment process is evolving at lightning speed, empowering merchants to elevate the customer experience—and simplify the path to payment completion. Here’s a quick look at the top eCommerce payment trends currently making that a reality:

Personalization pushes customers over the finish line

In an increasingly competitive digital market, how can everyday businesses break through the noise? It’s simple: create a payment experience so seamless, customers wonder if it was built just for them. 

The localization of eCommerce pages, for example, is one way of reducing the friction of global shopping. Payment pages automatically load to reflect the customer’s native language and currency, eliminating the hassle of translating fees, totals, or web text. By making the user feel at home, localization enables merchants to more easily earn trust and establish authentic relationships with buyers worldwide. 

Another personalization trend worth knowing about: automatically generated links to abandoned carts. The action item of many a strategically timed email, these links prompt customers to return exactly where they left off to complete their purchase.  

Tokenization eases security concerns

Cyber threats lurk around every corner, unnerving even the most digitally literate shoppers. When it comes to global shopping and cross-border transactions, customer fears run even deeper—and businesses around the world are feeling the effects.

Tokenization allows customers to breathe a sigh of relief. It works by replacing the customer’s primary account numbers (PANs) with an automatically generated number known as a token, which safely stores the customer’s sensitive data. No longer are stolen cards or data hacks a major concern: tokens are always unique to each individual merchant-customer transaction.

By encouraging reluctant shoppers to complete the payment process, tokenization is bridging the gap between the screen and the world it connects us with.

Smart retry logic reduces customer churn

eCommerce payments—especially cross-border payments—get declined all the time. Smart retry logic uses machine learning to retry a declined card an optimal number of times, making life simpler for consumers and boosting transaction completion rates. With faster, more intelligent routing, the technology enables businesses to reduce friction and churn.

Because the circumstances of each declined transaction vary, a single cookie-cutter retry schedule rarely works. By tailoring reattempts to each transaction through predictive algorithms and behavioral data, merchants can push more payments through—and enjoy the confidence of efficiency and accuracy.

Pre-built payment pages enable simplicity

For merchants, a good payment experience involves an easy and quick set-up and infinite scalability. For customers, it’s all about a delightful and seamless user experience: the less friction, the better.

Pre-built payment pages—which can easily accept or be adapted to local payment methods, currencies, flows, languages, and more—cater to both sides. Merchants find them refreshingly accessible: they don’t require any formal coding knowledge, nor do they take more than a few minutes to integrate. They enable businesses of all sizes to expand across the globe, all without the time and effort required of manually built payment pages. Customers find them intuitive and personalized—enough to sway them toward the checkout button.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is evolving rapidly

BNPL, a popular short-term financing strategy, is growing increasingly personalized. With ChargeAfter, for example, merchants can offer their customers access to multiple lenders—including their own white-labeled BNPL platform. The result for customers? A more flexible and satisfying global shopping experience.

Crypto, too, is making its mark on the BNPL landscape. XRPaynet, a retail crypto payment platform, will soon allow customers to pay back installments in crypto—one of many recent announcements involving crypto-BNPL fusion initiatives.

Within global eCommerce—where crypto is known for its speed, traceability, minimal friction, and immunity from chargebacks—such developments are a breakthrough in cross-border flexibility.

How Airwallex can help

Global shopping will only continue to grow more flexible, efficient, and trustworthy. In a sea of friction-filled payment processes, merchants can stand out with the right tools and resources—beginning with Airwallex. 

With our embedded finance technology, you can create your own payment products and pages complete with pre-built flows, customizable UI, simplified compliance, and more. And our core API—a suite of straightforward APIs that easily integrate with existing workflows—dramatically simplifies cross-border transactions, FX, payouts, and multi-currency card issuing.

Whether a few miles away or halfway across the globe, it’s never been easier to delight your users—all on a single, intuitive platform. 

Ready to take the leap? Speak with a specialist today.