TRENDING: Retail And The Power Of Real-Time Pricing

Ambitious retailers don’t want to stay locked in one lane, but rather to spread to new audiences, new product types and more — and payments-powering companies are stepping up to give them the lift they need to reach these expansion dreams.

The December edition of the PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker, a WePay collaboration, features the latest insight from the CEO of AmeriCommerce, a major player in the eCommerce platform space, and the latest headlines from the space.

News from around the Payments Powering Platforms World

Spurred by demonetization, major payment players are piling into India, hoping to be consumers’ rebound now that cash has fallen out of official favor. PayPal, for example, which was once only an enabler of cross-border transactions for Indian merchants and consumers, recently launched efforts to enable domestic payments as well.

PayPal isn’t the only one, though. Google is also vying for a foothold in India’s domestic payments market, which is largely dominated by Paytm at present.

Recent studies indicate there’s an appetite for the solutions these companies are producing in the Southeast Asia region. A recent survey of 2,000 consumers in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka found a strong willingness to embrace new digital payment methods in these markets. Out of 2,000 respondents, 78 percent said they were highly inclined to use new modes of digital payment, and 70 percent said they use cash less often.

In the U.S., Walmart Pay’s star continues to rise as the firm’s usage rate edges in on that of Apple Pay, a more senior player in that space. Walmart’s QR-based payment platform also appears to be showing a higher adoption rate than that of Samsung Pay and Android Pay combined.

eCommerce platforms power up merchant ambitions

In today’s digital world, it’s not enough for merchants to have a product or service to sell. For rising merchants — as well as major retailers already at the top and eager to stay there — it’s important to be able to sell goods across multiple virtual storefronts, accept all kinds of payments, offer tailored pricing and more, said Ed Sturrock, CEO and co-founder of eCommerce platform AmeriCommerce, in a recent interview with PYMNTS.

Sturrock discussed the multistore model and why for mid- to large-sized B2Bs or B2Cs, pricing flexibility and payments acceptance power are key.

“[For example, for wholesalers] it’s a race to compete against pricing and it’s a margins game,” he said. “What they have to do is tweak their pricing, have quantity-based pricing, customer-type pricing.”

To read the feature story, along with the latest Payments Powering Platforms headlines and trends, and rankings of 87 industry providers, download the Tracker below.

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To download the latest edition of the PYMNTS.com Payments Powering Platforms, a WePay collaboration, please fill out the form below.

The PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker, a WePay collaboration, serves as a monthly framework for the space, providing coverage of the most recent news and trends along with a provider directory highlighting the key players contributing across the segments that comprise the payments-integrated platform ecosystem.