How payments can help deliver connected commerce

Written by Lisa Middleton | December 4, 2019 at 8:30 AM

Today’s consumers are part of a tech-savvy generation. Technology has empowered them to be more intelligent and demanding than ever before. Whereas sales used to be driven by proximity and availability, nowadays everything is available online, on demand.

31% of consumers bought something online at least weekly^[1]
24% used a mobile device to shop, 23% a computer and 16% a tablet^[2]
€620 billion in retail sales is expected to be influenced by smartphones or tablets in 2022, up from €306 billion in 2017^[3]

^{[1] PwC Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019
[2] PwC Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019
[3] ‘By 2021, €1 Trillion Of EU Retail Sales Will Be Digitally Impacted’, Forrester, May 2018}

From siloed channels to connected commerce

Customer journeys and expectations have changed. Retailers must now support various paths to purchase and channel combinations. Customers expect to buy online and collect or return in-store. If goods are out of stock in-store, they expect to be able to order them online and have them delivered to their home, office or a parcel locker.

Retail is moving from siloed channels to a connected commerce experience, these channels include:

Websites
Physical stores
Mobile
Computer
Tablet
Catalogues
Kiosks
Marketplaces
Click-and-collect
Endless aisles
Mixed bag
Split shipping
Partial refunds

Between Finance and Commerce

How consumers check out and pay is also part of the shopping experience. Making this seamless, irrespective of channel, helps retailers reach customers, improve conversion and basket sizes. Payment sits at the intersection between finance and commerce, so a payment provider must be able to offer the right services at and around the moment of payment.

These services include:

Alternative payments
Card acquiring
Collection services
Conversion improvement
Payment pages
Reporting
Risk management
Tokenisation

Time to switch?

Seamless omni-channel retailing is easier in theory than in practice. The reality for many businesses is having to do more with less. It is having to overcome legacy infrastructure constraints by developing point solutions and work-arounds. However, at some point the work-arounds may no longer work. There are also concerns around their robustness and resilience.

Key business objectives include:

Improve customer experience
Maintain brand image
Implement projects on budget and on time
Drive down IT costs
Reduce acquiring and payment costs
Improve business processes and reporting

How PXP Financial can help

If your current payment partner is impeding your growth objectives, maybe it’s time to switch? To find out more about what PXP Financial can do to help your business, get in touch with us today: sales@pxpfinancial.com or www.pxpfinancial.com

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