Retail

Optimizing consumer payments

for retailers and merchants

The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in the retail sector, leading many retailers to enhance their online sales channels. E-Commerce continues to be popular, and we expect this trend to persist providing consumers and businesses with a unified commerce experience and blurring the division between what is considered to be online and what is in-store.

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Consumers engage with consumer brands across a wide range of channels. Beyond shopping in-store and using e-commerce, customers also research products and write reviews on social media platforms and a variety of forums, blogs and marketplaces.

As a result, many retailers are adopting a unified commerce strategy. By focusing on digital customer journeys, they aim to improve customer satisfaction and increase sales revenue. Payments are integral to the customer experience, and many retailers are using them to differentiate to create a unified payment experience. As well as redesigning payment acceptance, they are offering new services such as loyalty, buy now, pay later (BNPL), co-branded cards and gift cards.

Responsibility for payments is shifting from the treasury or finance function to the product, technology or commercial teams. They’re closer to the customer, and work together to deliver customer experiences. In the future, we expect embedded finance services to be increasingly integrated in the customer journey.

Following years when retailers focused on driving down the cost of payments, a new phase has begun. Many retailers now see payments as a growth opportunity and are focused on optimising authorisation rates.

Loyalty programmes play an important role in developing a bond between the customer and the brand. We believe loyalty programmes and payment should be integrated to enable streamlined customer journeys.

Working with our retail clients

We help retailers around the world to build omnichannel customer journeys, with payment acceptance at the centre. Retailers often ask us to help them choose a new payment provider or to provide expert insight so they can make an informed decision.

Our 360° Payments Diagnostic is a proprietary methodology for assessing the payment strategy of retailers. Using it, we can identify cost reduction and revenue enhancement opportunities. The methodology is proven to increase sales conversion, reduce operational costs and engage consumers, whatever payment method and channel they prefer. The methodology enables retailers to attribute, track and measure the value of payments across all their sales channels.

Our deep insights into the payments industry worldwide enable us to benchmark every element of a retailer’s cost of payment acceptance and processing. Our independent advice helps retailers choose payment providers with confidence. We help build a payment acceptance solution that encourages seamless checkout and increases sales revenue.

The 360° Payments Diagnostic methodology supports a unified commerce strategy and the merchant’s internal design of its organisation that is best to support a future-proof payment strategy.  

When we work with retailers and merchants our service capabilities include:

     We will work alongside you as you define your value proposition. We will collaborate with you throughout the development and launch phases, and ultimately help you to grow your business sales revenues using the optimal unified commerce payment acceptance strategy.

Our Experts

Working with our experts in retail

Keeping up with ever-changing customer expectations is one of the main challenges that retailers are facing today. The role of a Chief Payment Officer is expected to be standard practice in retail. Our retail clients understand the importance of the customer journey - from browsing to buying and beyond the transaction. This is where our clients are developing payment acceptance strategies that include offering payment solutions to their consumers as a means of differentiating themselves in a highly competitive market.

Mark Beresford
Head of the Retail Practice

We conduct detailed analysis of the implications of accepting the mainstream payment methods along-side alternative payment methods on the overall sales revenues of our clients across their different channels and geographies. We use a proprietary methodology, called the 360o Payments Diagnostic, along with in-house benchmark data. Together this is a proven process that delivers value to our retail clients.”

Davide Villa
Consultant based in San Francisco

Case studies

Our latest retail experience

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How can EDC support your sales growth in retail?

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