How Global Mobile Payments Create Frictionless In-Store Sales

How Global Mobile Payments Create Frictionless Sales In-Store | Citcon

By Jean Kany

What is the single most important step to take for your business to profit quickly? No, it isn’t marketing (although there’s a place for that, too). If you’re selling something, you have to make payments hassle-free.

Making payments and checkouts easy can mean the difference between a successful purchase and a dissatisfied customer. Payment friction leads to much customer dissatisfaction.

In-store shopping fiascos such as long queues have pained more than 60% of shoppers who are willing to pay for purchases. Figures like these show how payment friction can lead your business South. To avoid becoming another statistic, you need to address payment friction, and you need to do it fast.

Luckily, global mobile payments have been making things easier for entrepreneurs and buyers. Global mobile payments have made payments secure, certain, and in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, safe.

“How?” you ask? Stick around to learn more about how global mobile payments grease in-store sales!

What Is Payment Friction?

A simple way to understand what payment friction is would be to look back at a failed purchase. By failed purchase, we mean you chose a product, took it to the counter, but decided against buying it later.

You may have had several reasons behind your decision. We’re willing to bet that one of them had to do with how hard it was to pay for the item. And, we aren’t talking about whether or not you had enough money.

Rather, you may have been put off by problems with the payment options. Maybe paying with your credit card required additional security checks and forms. Or, perhaps the store only allowed cash payments and this can take time due to handling.

In-store frictionless payments can offer your business more sales.

Do you recall the difficulty and frustration? If you do, you were, at that moment, a victim of payment friction. It happens whenever there is an obstacle preventing someone from paying for a purchase. While it doesn’t make payment impossible, it can create difficulties for the buyer.

As a result, the shopper may abandon the purchase — for a reason unrelated to the product. Entrepreneurs today are taking steps to address this. For many, global mobile payments are the quantum leap in frictionless payments.

As a business owner selling products and services online, you need in-store frictionless payments.

4 Benefits of In-Store Frictionless Payments

4 benefits of in-store frictionless payments - infographic

In-store frictionless payments can offer your business more sales. They can also lead to better customer appeal due to the ease of checkout. In detail, here are four benefits of having frictionless payments for your brick-and-mortar store:

1. Streamlined In-Store Check Out Process

Frictionless payments can give your checkout process a more logical flow for the buyer. Between choosing a product and making the purchase, the user can choose from a variety of payment options. Depending on how you make payment terminals or counters available, you might even remove long queues.

With optimization for all payment options, the buying process becomes seamless, giving customers a better user experience — enough to keep them coming back for more.

2. Improved Customer Satisfaction

For most, the hassle of a long queue can be enough to deter them from buying a product, regardless of its quality.

With a more streamlined checkout process comes better customer satisfaction. By reducing payment friction, mobile payments can shorten the waiting time. Global mobile payment works wonders for eliminating wasted time spent on money handling.

3. Enhanced Security via Tokenization

In the United States, the most commonly used payment method remains to be credit cards. Debit cards come in at a close second, trailed by other payment methods. While this may encourage most buyers to take out their wallets at the counter, one thing weighs in the minds of shoppers — security risks. As a result, most people are hesitant to switch to electronic in-store payments, fearing falling prey to fraud, scams, and identity theft.

Luckily, data security has gone a long way. And now, most frictionless payment options come equipped with ID tech that tracks user transactions and prevents security threats. Friction-eliminating ID tech also tracks possible cases of fraud in real-time.

4. Fraud Detection In Real-Time

Most frictionless payment platforms come equipped with an address verification service (AVS) that tracks users based on the information they have given:

– In their credit cards

– In their debit cards

– In their supporting ID if requested by the person manning the counter

On top of that, staff these days have been briefed on using cross-referencing to verify identification. Frictionless payment platforms that require ID data can help staff detect fraud.

By cross-referencing personal information and the payment option used, staff can identify identity theft on the spot. This additional layer of security has acted as a deterrent from those looking to commit fraud.

Global Mobile Payments: Frictionless and Contactless

Mobile payment options have reduced waiting times for many consumers. They have become a way for people to buy products safely and quickly. These benefits of mobile payments have been a well-received option for billions of mobile users.

Global mobile payments leverage mobile technology’s portability and security ID features like fingerprint scanners. These features not only add convenience but reduce the number of security checks at the counter.

Mobile payment options have reduced waiting times for many consumers.

Fingerprint ID has provided speed, convenience, and security. In doing so, it has reassured the public that phones can double as wallets and cards — wherever they choose to shop.

Perhaps an obvious albeit unsung benefit of frictionless payments is their ability to be contactless. With the COVID-19 pandemic, safety means not having to exchange cash by hand. The desire to avoid cross-contamination has also led to the demand for cashless transactions.

Related Read: 5 Reasons Contactless Payments Will Outlast the Global Pandemic

In short, you can’t go wrong with being open to mobile payments. Doing this will make buying your products frictionless and contactless — two things people need more of nowadays. And, with integrations like real-time ForEx calculators, you open your business up to foreigners in your store.

A bonus when you accept payments from mobile wallets like WeChat Pay and Alipay: there’s no need for ForEx integration. If you’re a merchant who charges in USD, you get paid in USD while the consumer pays in their own currency. In fact, Alipay even incentivizes consumers to use its mobile wallet by offering them a more attractive ForEx rate.

If these benefits don’t get your mouth watering, perhaps the added efficiency of payment will. Mobile payments can eliminate money handling, leading to faster buying times and a better customer experience.

Eliminate Payment Friction From Your In-Store Checkout Process!

Payment friction is like a willing date that didn’t show up. Everything is ready, but somewhere, something had to go wrong for the date to fall through. The level of frustration felt with payment friction becomes palpable not just for you but also for your customer.

No entrepreneur in his right mind desires payment friction. It can interrupt your checkout process in a way that bad reviews and a pandemic can’t. If you need to hear one message from this post, it’s this:

Make things easier on your business and customers! Eliminate payment friction!

How? By trying Citcon!

Citcon offers one simple integration for 100+ mobile wallets. Our platform has also been optimized for credit cards, debit cards, and direct bank transfers, aside from mobile wallets.

To see how it works, request a short, no-commitment demo with a member of the Citcon team today.

Remove buyer frustration and payment friction! Grease things up for your customers with help from Citcon.

Related Read: 10 Questions to Ask a Global Payment Gateway Provider

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