Which Payment Options Should You Offer Your E-commerce Customers?
E-commerce is more competitive than ever before, with almost every business now opting for online sales as well as their in-store presence. This means that competition is stiff and strategies such as a smooth website and a solid product are not enough to continue to grab people’s attention. Additional offerings to customers continue to be the best way to retain interest in your business and brand. A major thing that customers will take into consideration these days is the payment options that are available to them. This can vastly change whether someone will commit to buy what is in their basket or not. If the checkout is not seamless with the right options, shoppers might just ditch the purchase altogether. But what payment options should you be looking to ensure that you offer to your e-commerce customers?
- E-Wallets
All the best e-commerce businesses are sure to offer their customers different e-wallet checkout payment options. E-wallets offer safe, secure, and rapid transactions between customers and businesses. Given they already have accessible funds to go and can securely transact, the customer will not need to faff about inputting card details or other personal information, making it a rapid transaction that many are attracted to. PayPal is widely recognised as the biggest and best when it comes to E-wallets, but there are many options available to customers to suit their preferences. Apple Pay and Google Pay also remain popular because of the ease of having these options set up on your phone, allowing customers simple and effective payment gateways. Additionally, there are more country-specific e-wallets such as DuitNow in Malaysia.
These E-wallets make things super simple for the customer and are particularly popular in industries where things need to be done quickly to get the best outcome, such as online casinos, public transport, and ticketing websites. Using e-wallets, such as making DuitNow deposits on online casinos, means you can get quick deposits and withdrawals whilst operating on a secure and simple platform.
- Debit and Credit Cards
Despite the rise in more technological and digital payment options, the use of credit cards and debit cards remains the most popular way for people to pay at checkouts. In 2024 in the UK, debit cards were the most popular payment option, accounting for 48% of online transaction usage.
Many people continue to endorse this payment method because of the safety offered by financial institutions and the rapid transactions offered. The familiarity that debit and credit cards pose is also a key factor, particularly when looking at older generations who are more skeptical of digital advances.
Increasingly, people are using more secure payment gateways such as Stripe and Square to authorise these transactions from their debit and credit cards, which is something customers seem to be moving towards and should be a worthy inclusion considered by businesses looking to diversify their payment options.
- Pay Later Services
BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) services have evolved over the years to become incredibly popular in recent years. This model has been scarred historically by the likes of Wonga and payday loans, which have extorted people, but nowadays people are increasingly using payment methods such as Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm to fund their purchases. These services will break the payment down into smaller, regular payments to make bigger purchases more available to wider audiences. This particular payment method is more common in Gen-Z and younger generations. These services allow customers to manage budgets and offer 0%-interest rates for the service, which is appealing to many.
- Cryptocurrency
Despite its massive surge in popularity in the investment sector and even in many people’s daily lives, cryptocurrency remains fairly niche. However, things may be changing with recent regulatory changes in America at the forefront of bringing crypto to mainstream popularity. Crypto is also particularly popular in tech-savvy groups, and offering this to customers could be a great way to carve an innovative brand in the market.
Crypto offers decentralized funds, meaning that many international shoppers may favor this, or those who are looking to avoid any financial footprints. It is rapid and secure, ticking all the payment gateway boxes. Despite some reservations from many, the likes of Coinbase and Bitpay have become fairly well-established platforms for trading crypto and can be great additions for any business looking to implement this payment option for their customers in order to get ahead of the curve.
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