Last week, emerchantpay’s SVP of Retail, Angus Burrell, joined the expert panel on Payments and Card Network’s webinar: Card and Payments Opportunities During a Pandemic & The Lessons Learnt. Alongside ING, Nets Group, and Up in the Air, Angus discussed how the pandemic had impacted the retail and travel industries, as well as identifying the payment trends that are set to continue.
Below, we’ve listed our top three takeaways from the webinar so your business can stay in the know about changing consumer payment habits.
Consumer trust is king
Everything boils down to understanding the consumer and being able to gain their trust by showing that you know what they want. Listen and learn from their pain-points and work to create an experience that overcomes these challenges. Be alert to mismatches between consumer behaviour and the processes that you have in place. It’s also important to keep pace with the consumers’ speed of adoption and not give in to the tendency to force things on consumers that we think they want.
Instead, focus on putting their needs at the centre of your business and optimising each step of their purchase journey around them. This will lead to an engaged customer base who will trust that you have their best interests at heart. Even though many consumers are open to embracing new technologies, a lot still rely on long-established payment methods (get more insight into the preferred payment options of global consumers in our latest Global Payments Outlook 2023 whitepaper). Strike the balance between innovation and creating trust by offering a selection of both well-established and leading-edge payment options.
Make payments disappear
In reality, customers rarely pay attention to your payment flow unless it disrupts their buying experience. A seamless payment journey will often go unnoticed by consumers but can be influential in whether they shop with you again. Bearing this in mind, it’s still very important for merchants to put in the work to optimise their flow.
Merchants should work to embed the point of payment within the overall experience. This can be done in several ways and many merchants are turning to mobile to help achieve slick payments. One of the first things most consumers ask is “can I do this from my mobile phone?” Therefore, merchants should make efforts to move towards mobile in a way that works in harmony with their existing set-up.
A shift in salary payments
There’s an increasing interest from businesses who are looking to issue their own cards to pay their employees. The ability to seamlessly make payments and have an overview of employee spending across accounts is appealing to larger businesses. It is likely that there will be a widespread shift in the way that employees get paid in the near future. The change in systems we have available and the growing expectation for instant payments is predicted to extend to salaries and expenses. Due to the pandemic, it’s hard to guess when this will become a reality as it could slow down the progress, or even work as a catalyst. This was an ongoing thread throughout the webinar, with panellists reflecting that COVID-19 had accelerated a lot of payment trends and can be expected to kickstart many more.
If you’re interested in hearing more insights from the panellists, the webinar can be watched here:
Speak with one of our payment experts to find out how we can help future-proof your offering.