What Does the Future Hold for eCommerce Payments in 2023?

June 2023

Fintech & Payments

Cara Malone

Senior Research Analyst

eCommerce is a major engine of the world’s economy. In this blog, based on our latest eCommerce payments research, we will outline some of the key issues and considerations for stakeholders within this market.

Enabling Cross-border Payments

The growth in the international mobility of goods, services, capital and people has increased the economic importance of cross-border payments, which encompasses any type of transaction where the payer and the recipient of the transaction are located in different countries.
 
Despite their importance, many cross-border payments continue to suffer from long-standing challenges to high-cost, low-speed, limited access and insufficient transparency. These challenges can particularly impact remittances. It can take up to 10 days to transfer money from one country to another and it can cost up to 10% of the transfer’s value.

Consumer Payment Preferences

The ability for merchants to provide the preferred payment methods for the markets in which they operate is critical. Merchants need to ensure that they have a thorough  understanding of consumer behaviour and that they are offering the consumer their payment method of choice, which tend to be payments which offer the most convenience for the consumer.
 
In order to maximise revenue, merchants need to be able to offer all the payment methods that customers are going to want to use. However, there are many payment methods which confuse customers at checkout. Some merchants will be content with only being able to access 80% of shoppers with the payment offers they provide. For the larger eCommerce players, the inability to reach even a small percentage of shoppers means missing out on significant revenue opportunities. Therefore, a balance can be difficult to attain.

The Growth of Omnichannel

Offering an omnichannel experience for the consumer has become a significant requirement for retailers in order to tap into maximum revenue potential.

Consumers have made omnichannel features, such as buying online for in-store pickup part of their regular shopping routine the pandemic, and these trends in the eCommerce market have been seen to continue. Younger consumers are more enthusiastic about new ways of shopping. Consumers are giving less of a thought to traditional channel boundaries as they increasingly evaluate brands and retailers on the seamlessness of their experience.
 
Omnichannel excellence requires extreme focus on value creation. Market leaders are introspecting at their strategic and customer priorities and deciding their position from an omnichannel perspective. Security is an additional concern in facilitating the customer experience by offering multiple ways to make purchases. The omnichannel  experience can become a potential security challenge, as it opens up the company to more instances in which they can be attacked. Cybercriminals are one step ahead with the strategy to the payment mechanism, and the challenge is not only to have robust authentication methods in place, but also to ensure that all touchpoints are hardened, including account recovery for all channels.

Want more insights and statistics?

Download our latest eCommerce payments whitepaper, which examines key trends within the eCommerce payment sector, including the benefits of providing a range of frictionless payment options to users, and in turn how this impacts eCommerce merchants and causes the reduction in cart abandonment rates. You can also visit our infographics area, where you'll find an infographic containing our latest eCommerce payments market statistics.