Why Payment Choice Can Make or Break Retail’s Holiday Season

There are more than a few factors tied to success during the holiday season. To put it mildly, the season is as much about stress as it is about giving. Merchants are tallying up the sales at the (virtual) registers as their transaction volumes take off. Shoppers want the best deal as they shop, often globally, on their mobile devices. And fraudsters, of course, are looking for their next score.

Rob Gatto, chief revenue officer at Paysafe, told PYMNTS that beyond the holiday — and well beyond December — there are some universal truths as more merchants make their online presence felt across borders and tap into international markets. Paysafe is seeing growth in transactions stemming from commerce conducted on mobile devices, Gatto said.

What Consumers Want

“Consumers want to use their favorite payment method,” he noted. “And if you, as a merchant, don’t have it, your chances of closing the sale drop dramatically.” By way of example, from Gatto’s personal preference: If the site does not offer Apple Pay as an option, well, he’s likely to abandon his cart.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “the consumer wants choice.” If that choice is lacking, Paysafe research shows, as many as 4 in 10 consumers will skip the sale if their preferred payment method does not show up on the checkout page.

Gauging the right payment method to offer, at the right time, to the right consumers — while crafting a personalized experience — is no easy task. Neither is fighting fraudsters, where card-not-present transactions create a fertile ground for chargebacks and other scams to rise.

For those merchants navigating the challenges and opportunities of eCommerce, he said, “You have to be on top of being able to deliver the right experience, while making sure that you protect yourself.” The enterprise wants fast and secure approvals with a minimal amount of risk. Paysafe, for its part, offers advanced fraud detection across its platform, which also enables payment processing, digital wallet and online cash solutions, across more than 260 payment types and 40 currencies.

Data flows across the platform, said Gatto — so much so that payments-level details offer insight into the consumers, to empower merchants to examine and embrace personalized communications.

“It’s important that what consumers are shown while they’re shopping is appropriate for who they are and where they are,” he said. Merchants who attempt personalization and don’t get it right might find that their efforts backfire, rather than engendering greater customer loyalty. The consumer in Brazil must have a shopping cart that “understands” Pix, or bank transfers. In the U.S., credit is a preferred method, and cash is still an option or preferred method in nations where the underbanked/unbanked population is significant.

The Lure of Digital Wallets

Digital wallets, said Gatto, are proving to be a strong favorite for embedding a broad range of local payment options — including the ones just mentioned. Consumers may (and do) use one payment method for groceries, another for gas and yet another method for travel. By way of example, said Gatto, Paysafe offers a white label wallet with a payments vendor in the video gaming space to complete microtransactions, with a branded card housed inside the wallet.

“We’re seeing embedded finance everywhere, and it’s starting to show up more often in the wallet,” said Gatto.

As he told PYMNTS, as merchants interact with their end users on far-flung shores, “the more personalized you can make your message, the more loyalty, and more sales, you’ll drive from that consumer.”