A Guide to Frictionless Payments

Frictionless payments are exactly what they sound like: payments which are made as simple - or as frictionless - as possible for the buyer.

In this post, we’ll define frictionless payments in more detail, run through the benefits they can offer merchants and guide you through some options for making frictionless payments a part of your business.

What are frictionless payments?

Frictionless payments refer to in-store and ecommerce checkout processes with as few barriers to being as possible. In other words, they facilitate buying by making the process straightforward as can be. This reduces churn, shopping cart abandonment rates, checkout abandonment rates and drives conversions.

Elements of a frictionless payment experience

Frictionless payment trends change often, but there are some general criteria involved:

• Minimal waiting time

• Fast checkout

• Fewer checkout steps

• Enjoyable customer experience

• Less cognitive strain for customers

E-wallets, contactless payments, wearable payment devices, in-app payments, one-click payments and auto-renewing subscriptions are all examples of frictionless payments. This is because they are all expressly designed to make the buying process quick and easy.

The benefits of frictionless payments

Frictionless payments offer the obvious benefit of convenience for shoppers who can make their purchases in a quick and easy fashion. But frictionless payments also offer a myriad of benefits for sellers.

Below we’ll outline some of the biggest advantages of having frictionless payment systems in place as a merchant.

1. Low shopping cart abandonment rates

Shopping cart abandonment is when customers visit an online store, browse and fill up their cart, but abandon the page before completing their purchase. This happens due to a variety of reasons, but finding the process too time-consuming or complicated is one of the big ones.

You can counteract this with frictionless payments. If the buying process is quicker and simpler for shoppers, they’re much more likely to follow through and complete their planned purchases.

2. More efficient checkout

When it comes to in-store purchases, frictionless payments can help speed up the checkout process and make it run more smoothly. With self-checkouts and contactless payments, for example, customers can get served much quicker. This can reduce queue times, reduce the number of staff required at checkouts and overall make the checkout process more streamlined.

3. Increased customer satisfaction and retention

Frictionless payments are customer-pleasing as they greatly improve the shopping experience. This can boost customer satisfaction and retention rates, leading to more repeat purchases, customer loyalty and word-of-mouth advertising.

4. Advantage over competitors

As customers are increasingly satisfied with their purchasing experience due to frictionless payments, they’re more likely to return to your store - on-line or in-store. This means they’ll choose you over competitors that perhaps can’t match the level of convenience you offer.

5. Enhanced payment security

The rise in ecommerce has coincided with rises in ecommerce fraud. It’s therefore more important than ever to have adequate data protection and security measures in place.

Frictionless payments, like digital wallets, are among the most secure payment methods available as they use tokenization. This is a process whereby sensitive payment information is substituted with randomly-generated numbers. This makes it impossible for hackers and fraudsters to obtain customer payment details.

Frictionless payments with GoCardless

GoCardless offers businesses various payment solutions that are quick, easy and convenient for both merchants and customers.

One of these solutions is GoCardless’s PayTo tool. As an innovative form of Direct Debit, PayTo allows merchants to initiate real-time payments from customer bank accounts. It is set to transform the way we take payments and, like all Direct Debit set-ups, allows no room for fraud. With instant customer verification, PayTo is the fastest and safest way to conduct account-to-account payments.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.