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With consumer spending growing towards the start of the year, as well as increasing popularity of online purchasing continues to grow across all age groups Merchants are facing both greater opportunities and a greater threat to the dollars of consumers. It is vital to come up with new ways to meet the needs of consumers in addition to offering them an additional opportunity to purchase on your brand or website. One of the most effective places to begin is with the checkout process. It is important to identify possibilities to make it easier for customers to complete this vital last step of the purchase and offer the choice of making payments to your clients to improve their shopping customer experience.
A trend that's rapidly gained popularity on purchasing online includes the "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) option during checkout. BNPL is a payment method which allows consumers to split the price of their purchase into manageable installments separated over time, sometimes in just several weeks, or in other cases in the course of several months.
Buy now, pay later is becoming more popular
Many consumers are now making use of pay-over-time payment options as they become available. The year 2023 saw that online merchants saw an impressive growth in transactions made through BNPL, with volume growing by 42.5 percent between the years. This means that BNPL has put around $16.6 billion in merchant book accounts during the final two months of 2023 alone which is an increase that Adobe expects to continue until 2024.
Roughly 93.3 million customers will be using BNPL by 2024, according to EMarketer, as well as American Banker reported that the BNPL market in the US may reach up to $8.3 billion before 2028. BNPL is getting embraced increasing by online retail stores, including Amazon.com and Amazon.com, which will further accelerate the expansion of BNPL and making the choice easier for those buying online.
That makes BNPL can be a viable option for businesses that should not overlook as they compete with an ever-growing online marketplace.
Purchase now and pay later: Considerations to make
The incorporation of BNPL alternatives for checkouts prior to the time of checkout gives retailers more opportunities to attract new customers, and build a long-lasting relationship with them.
If a merchant doesn't offer the BNPL choice at checkout This could be the perfect time to incorporate it into the menu. If a merchant does offer the option, making the BNPL option to be more prominently displayed on their sites, particularly during checkout or by promoting it by offering promotions can help their brands stick out and improve customer satisfaction for customers.
The more noticeable the BNPL option is displayed on the website of a retailer and the earlier they announce the service via emails and on social networks and on social networks, the more likely they would want to find out more about it, which will help the merchant get customers to their website to complete the transaction.
BNPL can help merchants expand their appeal to customers who want to purchase today, but also want to regulate the flow of cash with no credit. With the ability to break down the total cost of an item into, the form of, say, four installments of interest-free payment every two weeks, customers can get what they need with no delay. Certain BNPL service providers like Affirm provide longer time options, which can last many months or three years for carts with large sizes along with expensive goods.
The process of adding a payment option to the back end of a site's online shopping platform can seem overwhelming for small-scale merchants who are already strapped for time However, there are options that offer easy and quick to implement that can streamline the entire procedure for retailers. For instance, merchants generally can benefit from already-built integrations for ecommerce, such as Affirm Payments, which is an AffirmPayments extension that allows the quick introduction of a BNPL option to their existing checkout procedure.
Advantages of offering purchase now and pay later in your Woo store
What advantages do the BNPL integration bring? One benefit is that an integration will streamline the buying procedure for the increasing number of customers who prefer to pay in time. In addition, keeping customers on your website and guiding them to the checkout procedure is essential, especially for those younger customers who are familiar with online shopping. In fact, The National Retail Federation reports that nearly 50% (46 percentage) of Gen Z respondents consider a easy checkout process vital to the shopping experience.
One of the primary factors to take into consideration when integrating is how it will affect the buyer. It is essential that customers have the capability to view their payment options in addition to going through the approval process without having to go to an additional website. By integrating the system merchants make the process quick and simple as they can to their clients, making sure that their option isn't snuffed out by the sale.
An easy checkout process can assist in reducing abandonment of shopping carts. A recent Baymard Institute metastudy of 49 research papers revealed that cart abandonment rates still hovers around 70 percent which has not changed significantly over the past decade. The top reason that carts are abandoned is an checkout procedure that was either lengthy or difficult (22 percent of the time) in addition to the site didn't offer sufficient payment options (responsible up to 13% of cart abandonments). Thanks to the tightly integrated BNPL solutions, businesses can tackle both these customer concerns at once.
Which is the best buy for today? Pay later or a pay as you go
Selecting the BNPL service that is compatible with the needs of your business and with customer expectations is an important consideration to find the right solution. For example, Affirm provides custom payment solutions for merchants -- they can offer both short and long-term solutions as well as the option of 0% APR. By offering a payment solution that meets the requirements of consumers and the standard price, retailers can increase their affordability to consumers and possibly gain customers over the competition.
Another unique feature of Affirm is the Adaptive Checkout technology, which gives you the most suitable option for paying your customers according to the product's price and the overall quantity of the shopping cart. In the spirit of personalization, the game online, Affirm allows you to customize the duration and the APR of each purchase by providing a range of payment options to the customer, all in the form of a seamless experience.
What can you do to make sure that your existing or potential customers know of the BNPL decision before they finalize their purchase? As per your market you may want to consider pushing it through the social media platforms. Retail Dive says that 85percent of consumers' buying options are affected by social media. Therefore, advertising using BNPL on these social media platforms can provide you with an edge. In cases where you're looking to target Gen Z be aware that nearly 45 percent of those polled have listed TikTok and Instagram as the top social media platforms that influence their purchasing decisions.
As summer can be a slow season for companies and companies, it's also the perfect time for retailers to focus on bringing BNPL to their website, before when the Back to School rush signals that it is the busiest time of year before the winter holidays. It offers a chance to take a thoughtful decision about vendors, smooth out any technical issues, and boost marketing campaigns to announce the addition of BNPL as a new payment option that can be utilized at payment point.
Offering the BNPL option when you checkout and announcing it via social media can make a difference for retailers looking to attract the attention of online buyers and beat out other retailers.
Do you wish to include the flexibility of payment into your online payment process? Apply to Affirm to begin and use the Affirm Payments extension to offer payment-over-time options through your checkout.
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Payment options provided by Affirm are subject to a credit check they may not be offered everywhere in the world and they are provided by these lenders: affirm.com/lenders.
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