How to reduce the rate of abandoned carts in eCommerce

According to the study “The Digital Consumer in Spain” conducted by Confianza Online, online purchases in 2023 surged by 61.81%, and the average ticket increased by 38.29% compared to five years earlier, reaching €367.05 per person. Additionally, there was a notable increase in acceptance among older users, with a significant rise in consumers over 50 years old, especially between 70 and 80 years old (78.13%).

Considering this data, it is very important for brands or stores to have an online presence. However, within the world of eCommerce, the competition is just a click away, so it is necessary to be agile and innovative throughout the customer’s purchase process.

Not offering the preferred payment method raises cart abandonment rate to 17%

Even if you have a very smooth and comfortable interface, it is important to pay close attention to the payment methods offered at checkout. According to a recent study by DHL (Why Online Shoppers Really Abandon Their Carts?), 17% of shoppers abandon their shopping cart upon discovering that the eCommerce does not offer their preferred payment method.

Although most online payments are made via debit or credit cards (41%), many other customers prefer to pay with other methods, such as virtual wallets (23%), bank transfer (12%), and BNPL (9%).

The adoption of these alternative payment methods can be motivated by different reasons: the convenience of using wallets (PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay), the sense of trust these methods provide since merchants cannot access card data, or even to finance their purchase through BNPL platforms (Pepper, Klarna, or Aplazame).

Of course, it is also important to consider that each country has a “preferred” payment method, apart from card payments. Here are a few examples:

• Spain: Bizum, Apple Pay, Google Pay, SeQura, Klarna, Pepper, PayPal.
• France: Wallets like PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay; BNPL like Klarna, Alma.
• Germany: Wallets like PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay; Sofort.

Despite all the data demonstrating the new payment habits of consumers, 21% of online stores resist offering payment methods other than cards, which increases the cart abandonment rate.

Offer a greater variety of payment methods as a solution

It seems obvious, right? However, this is not as simple as it seems, especially for smaller brands. Anyone can feel intimidated since having several payment solutions and integrating them into an eCommerce can require a significant investment of time and money.

But this does not have to be a problem. To facilitate the addition of payment methods, you can use ZRU , a unified payment platform that helps integrate new payment methods and manages each connection, taking care of updates and subsequent tests.

The ZRU platform provides agility to stores and brands ready to scale their business. It also facilitates the internationalization process of large companies by allowing the segmentation of payment screens, meaning that the customer can see the most used or preferred payment methods according to their country, currency, cart total, or any variable the store decides.

For example, if the buyer is on the Spanish website, Bizum will appear as an option. However, if they are on the French website, this payment method will not be shown.

6 advantages of using ZRU as a payment platform

1. Offer payment methods adapted to each type of buyer: Increasing conversions.
2. A single control panel: Where eCommerce and financial teams can manage each charge, without having to make refunds, send receipts, and other processes in different payment methods.
3. Ease of adding new payment methods with one click: Without relying on the development roadmap. This functionality allows exploring the use of new methods while scaling the business, facilitating expansion.
4. Focus on business growth: Instead of integrating new methods and managing each connection.
5. Optimization of all payment processes: Thanks to its payment orchestration function among different PSPs or the sending of payment links.
6. Checkout optimization through segmentation: Merchants can optimize each checkout according to the type of buyer or cart.

With so much competition in the digital world, adapting payment method options to the buyer is essential to avoid losing carts, and solutions like ZRU can help optimize payment processes while merchants focus on growing their business.