Merchants must cater to the distracted shopper

A person who’s in the park walking a dog probably isn’t only walking a dog. That person is planning their day, checking finances and checking out sales.

It’s important for merchants to recognize that even when shopping, consumers are multitasking, and the checkout experience must be accessible to a shopper whose attention is divided.

“Someone may be ordering a pizza or shopping on Amazon while they’re out,” said Bradley Riss, chief commercial officer at Checkout.com, a London-based firm that acts as a payment gateway, acquirer and processor. “And they could be doing all of these things using an [internet of things] device.”

Checkout.com — and companies like Square, Stripe and Adyen — allows retailers to quickly adapt to digital changes in consumer habits by building a larger and more diversified technology stack. The pandemic accelerated a push online that was already underway, including a need to support shopping, buying and payment while avoiding plastic cards, cash and crowding near a point of sale terminal.

Riss will be a panelist at Card Forum: Contactless, a virtual event March 16 presented by PaymentsSource and American Banker. The event chronicles the struggle merchants and payment companies face when balancing consumer permanent consumer changes from the pandemic and the pent up demand for in-person shopping and traveling as the economy recovers.

One of the most provocative trends is how the actual payment is disappearing as a point of innovative distinction, replaced by data accrual and analytics that start with enrollment and the commencement of shopping that can happen in any channel. Commerce is now more about reaching, registering and understanding recurring consumers before they finish the transaction. It’s a game of anticipation.

“Payments is a vehicle to access customers. How do you access customers when they walk into a store and are on a smartphone?” said Riss.

Merchants and merchant acquirers must address consumers who have become accustomed to shopping online while recognizing many retailers are still using legacy technology that not only predates the changes of the past year, but the burgeoning digital payments trend that existed before 2020. There’s where innovation such as the cloud and open development come into play, allowing businesses to add new features on the fly.

“The key here is making sure that the technology foundation is strong, and that you can build on top of that,” Riss said. “And there needs to be a vision of maximizing security to combat fraud while getting a deep understanding of payments data.”

Checkout.com has maintained a busy schedule of funding and upgrades to build what it refers to as an end-to-end system to support omnichannel commerce. The firm acquired ProcessOut to bolster data analytics and to fuel its geographic expansion. Checkout.com also joined Diem, the Facebook-associated stablecoin project that’s expected to launch soon.

Checkout.com’s client base includes companies that access the spectrum of fintech innovation, such as challenger bank Revolut, trading app Robinhood, ride-sharing service Grab and buy now/pay later company Klarna.

Join fellow payment executives for one of the few events tailored to the card-issuing community! Gain a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and trends facing the industry during this pivotal time. Register today for Card Forum: Contactless.

“The challenge has become understanding how consumers are interacting with the merchant,” Riss said. “There’s a more proactive, multichannel approach to reaching consumers and payments is part of that puzzle.”