In today’s digital era, secure and efficient payment processing has become an essential strategy for businesses. Increased e-commerce adoption has presented a new and competitive opportunity for retailers. With in-store shopping becoming a thing of the past, merchants now need ways to quickly adapt and provide a seamless online shopping experience for their customers. However, many merchants are facing challenges related to fraud, data security, and payment processing. In this hyper-competitive environment, striking a balance between robust security and a seamless experience is vital to survival. Within this landscape, payment tokenization has emerged as a powerful tool to enhance security and streamline transactions in various industries.
Payment is the most crucial step for online merchants and one of the most significant tension points for customers. Online shoppers’ expectations leave no room for a poor payment experience. The results from checkout experiences directly and immediately impact merchants as customers see transactions as an experience.
This is dwarfed by the number of abandoned carts that result from less-than-optimal customer experiences when a poorly designed interface, a confusing customer journey, or a complex or unclear payment process gets in the way of the sale. Eventually, impacting the overall business, including the merchant’s revenue and customer loyalty.
In 2021, retail e-commerce sales amounted to approximately $5.2 trillion worldwide, and this figure is forecasted to grow by 56 percent over the next few years, reaching about $8.1 trillion by 2026. In the wider retail industry, e-commerce accounted for almost 20 percent of retail sales worldwide, with forecasts indicating that the online segment will make up close to a quarter of total global retail sales by 2026.
Yet today’s merchants are hard-pressed to close retail sales as nearly 1 out of 5 shoppers abandon carts due to a long or complicated checkout process. Combine this with the fact that many merchants have not updated their payment systems in two years, and the result is an inability to orchestrate payments or optimize the online customer checkout experience effectively, leading to low conversion rates and customer cart abandonment.
Customers appreciate the convenience of one-click checkout and having their cards saved for recurring purchases, trusting that their payment credentials will be kept secure from online fraudsters. In most cases, such purchases use card-on-file (CoF) approaches where customer card information has been saved from a prior transaction and held (hopefully) in a secure way. That may provide a highly positive user experience, but there can still be friction in the form of false declines.
Network tokenization is a method that protects sensitive information by design. It allows for replacing sensitive payment credential data with a secure and unique token that can be used to optimize the payment process without details ever being exposed. This leads to an advanced payment solution where merchants can store their network tokens and use them interoperable and simultaneously with multiple Payment Service Providers (PSPs).
This technology sits invisibly behind e-commerce transactions and boosts the business for merchants and PSPs by combining the highest levels of security with a seamless customer experience.
In a rapidly evolving digital landscape where security and user experience are paramount, network tokenization emerges as a game-changer for businesses. By seamlessly integrating this technology into their payment ecosystems, merchants can enhance security, streamline transactions, and provide customers with a frictionless payment experience. As e-commerce continues to flourish, embracing network tokenization is not just a competitive advantage but a necessity for businesses looking to thrive in the digital economy. Check out our recent eGuide on Tokenization and understand how it can benefit your business.
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