The eCommerce trends of last year were unlike anything we’d ever seen before. When combined with Covid-19 regulations that accelerated consumers’ shift to digital channels, online shopping volumes reached new highs around the world. This shift was accompanied by a rise in the adoption of eCommerce payment solutions.
The already strong eCommerce industry made tremendous gains in 2020, and the future of digital sales seems more promising (and competitive) than ever. It is unlikely that businesses and consumers will abandon it even in the ‘post-COVID’ era since they have become so used to the new format of conducting financial transactions.
Key trends to expect
- Invisible Payments
Mobiles make digital payment integration in e-commerce checkouts more appealing. They facilitate so-called invisible payments, in which payment is often made automatically in the background somewhere along the customer journey.
One of the new invisible payment concepts, Grab+Go is an app that turns the customer’s phone into a mini checkout. This allows them to scan their goods as they go, complete their purchase with a single click, and then walk right out the door. The receipt for the purchase is stored in the app too.
- eCommerce Through Social Media
Another important trend that is gradually gaining traction is e-commerce via social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. The idea is for customers to be able to make purchases through the channels they are regularly engaged in. Artificial intelligence can extract items from photographs that a user uploads to an e-commerce site, allowing users to begin a shopping process directly from the image.
This is easily combined with payment methods provided by the social channel, such as Facebook Pay, or digital payments, such as Apple Pay, or even modern credit card solutions, such as Click to Pay.
- One-click payments or tokenization
This technology stores the information that a user submits on a checkout page upon making their first purchase and the payment information is automatically filled in on subsequent transactions with the same retailer.
A payment system encrypts the customer’s card data and converts it into a token, which serves as the buyer’s card identifier. Therefore, buyers who have previously paid with the same bank card on this website can make a one-click payment.
- Google Pay And Apple Pay Growth
The rate at which contactless payments are adopted is predicted to rise dramatically in the next few years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay dominate the contactless payments industry today. The fast increasing popularity of contactless payments is fueling corporate competition and Apple Pay now processes 43% of all contactless payments, making it the market leader. Google Pay accounts for 31%, while Samsung Pay accounts for 20%.
- Frictionless Experiences
A frictionless experience is designed to reduce the barriers experienced during the checkout process, whether online or offline.
It reduces the amount of time spent waiting by eliminating all unnecessary steps required to complete the purchase and features mobile payment, digital wallets, contactless card payments, auto-renew subscriptions, and more.
