Omni-channel payment strategy - key to seamless customer experience

An Omni-channel payments strategy is key to creating a seamless customer experience for most retailers, according to new research.
A study by ACI Worldwide and Ovum shows that 79% of merchants and retailers are committed to a seamless payment strategy covering all their channels. Different options in different channels confuse customers and detract from customer satisfaction.

The research report – 2017 Global Payments Insight Survey: Merchants and Retailers – also revealed that although EMV has lowered fraud prevention costs for most US companies, fraud continues to shift online. And while merchants and retailers plan to considerably increase investment in payments to improve customer experience (by 50% compared with 2015), more than three quarters of these organizations view security, compliance and fraud management issues as the greatest barriers to their investment decisions.

Principal study findings:

☀ Credit cards continue to dominate the payments market for retailers and merchants, accounting for 52% of payments in Asia.
☀ New and alternative payment tools now account for 10% of global merchant transactions with contactless cards, accounting for roughly 2% of transactions in Asia as high sales-volume merchants embrace quick and convenient means of payment.
☀ Some 59% of merchants and retailers plan to increase their payment investments during the next 18 to 24 months, up from 50% in 2015.
☀ Payment investment is high in all sectors, with 65% of travel and lodging companies reporting an increase in investment levels.
☀ Merchants and retailers expect Payment investment to improve customer experience, but more than 75% indicate that security and compliance are the greatest barriers to payments initiatives.
☀ Although 52% of merchants and retailers say their card-not-present (CNP) losses are growing, 70% say they are satisfied with their CNP fraud prevention tools.

“As commerce becomes increasingly digital, payments technology is critical to improving customer engagement and reducing costs – with 79% of global merchants and retailers noting that an Omni-channel approach is key to creating a seamless customer experience,” said Lynn Holland, VP of ACI Worldwide.
 
“Although there isn’t one path to payments modernization for merchants and retailers, the benefits of investing in new and alternative payments methods are increasing – in terms of both merchants’ bottom lines and overall improvement of customer experience,” added Matthew Heaslip, an analyst with Ovum.
 
“To stay competitive in this changing retail market, merchants and retailers must foster strong payment partnerships with companies that not only understand their market verticals, but can also help them both improve their Omni-channel capabilities and reach new customers.”

The study is canvassed executives from organizations across a myriad of retail categories, including general merchandise, foodservice and restaurants, grocery, fuel and convenience, and travel and lodging, in markets in the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa.