Why Merchant-Owned Apps Are Retail’s Fastest-Growing Sales Channel

Merchant-owned apps are becoming more important to retail growth at precisely the moment when the traditional customer journey is beginning to break apart.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Global Digital Shopping Index: Merchant Edition,” commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions, revealed that merchant-owned apps outperformed merchant websites on 11 of the 14 checkout capabilities measured. Among merchants selling through their own mobile apps, 57% reported that app sales increased during the previous 12 months, compared with 55% reporting growth through websites and 54% through physical stores.

Apps give merchants an owned environment in which customer identity, payment credentials, loyalty benefits and checkout tools can operate together, and their increasing use is happening at the same time that artificial intelligence is beginning to challenge the architecture behind commerce. That makes merchant apps a logical proving ground for the infrastructure merchants may eventually need to serve both human shoppers and AI agents.

Merchant Apps Are Winning Versus Traditional Channels on Checkout Depth

The channel merchants control most directly, their own app, is also the one in which they have installed the broadest set of modern checkout features. A customer who is already authenticated and has payment information stored can complete a transaction with less manual effort.

The app advantage is clearest in the payments experience. The report found that 42% of surveyed merchants offered biometric authentication in their apps, compared with 26% on their websites, a 16-percentage-point gap. QR-code checkout was available through 59% of apps and half of websites. Digital wallet autofill reached 63% in apps versus 56% on websites. Apps also led websites in one-click checkout and stored credentials, although by smaller margins of 3 percentage points each.

The strength of merchant apps also exposes how uneven commerce infrastructure remains. The report showed that 87 % of surveyed merchants said their checkout experience needed at least slight improvement, and 33% said considerable or significant upgrades were necessary. Only 13% described their checkout as already optimal.

That challenge is particularly acute for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which trailed large merchants by 12 percentage points in offering website biometrics, 11 points in stored credentials, and 10 points in autofill from both digital wallets and stored credentials.

Read the report: Global Digital Shopping Index: Merchant Edition

The Merchant App Is Becoming an AI Control Layer

The data did not prove that every merchant needs a proprietary app, or that apps will become the universal interface for AI commerce. Download fatigue, development costs and uneven customer engagement remain constraints, particularly for small retailers.

What the findings did suggest is that merchant-owned environments provide the most complete combination of identity and checkout functionality. Apps lead sales growth, carry more payment features than websites and give merchants greater control over stored credentials and repeat interactions.

That control may become more valuable as commerce grows less dependent on consumers manually navigating websites. AI agents will need structured information about products, availability, prices, payment options and rewards. Merchants will need attribution systems that connect agent activity to completed transactions and transaction value.

The report found that 61% of surveyed merchants agreed that AI-generated results would influence purchases more than traditional search results in 2026. Meanwhile, 58% said they expected agents to select payment methods according to fees and rewards, while 56% expected agents to complete transactions autonomously.

At the same time, only 23% of surveyed merchants could clearly identify both AI-driven traffic and purchases. Another 21% could detect agentic traffic but could not attribute completed sales to it. The remaining 56% reported inconsistent visibility, no ability to distinguish AI traffic, or uncertainty about their own capabilities.

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At PYMNTS Intelligence, we work with businesses to uncover insights that fuel intelligent, data-driven discussions on changing customer expectations, a more connected economy and the strategic shifts necessary to achieve outcomes. With rigorous research methodologies and unwavering commitment to objective quality, we offer trusted data to grow your business. As our partner, you’ll have access to our diverse team of PhDs, researchers, data analysts, number crunchers, subject matter veterans and editorial experts.