51% of Merchants Invest in Tech to Track Omnichannel Purchases

Loyalty is the glue that binds consumers to their merchants. It’s what keeps consumers spending online or in-store, even during inflationary times.

And for the merchants themselves, in-store experience that is both convenient and personalized is critical for keeping themselves front and center in consumers’ consciousness, and in capturing wallet share. To boost loyalty, retailers must follow their consumers across channels and anticipate where they may want to spend next — by knowing where they’ve been spending in the past.

In the report “Big Retail’s Innovation Mandate,” a PYMNTS and ACI Worldwide collaboration, a sample of more than 300 retailers in the United States and the United Kingdom offered up a cross-section of innovations that they are targeting in an effort to duplicate the online sphere’s seamless, intuitive shopping experiences that have been the hallmark of the great digital shift.

Bringing that ease of use into the brick-and-mortar realm has been no easy task, as these same firms need access to the payments and data management technology to make commerce easier and faster.

The data shows that among the key digital initiatives in retailers’ focus are tracking payment history across channels (a majority of verticals), followed by investing in more payments channels themselves.