Juniper Research maintains that today’s $5.3 trillion e-commerce market will continue to expand rapidly, driven by increased use in developed markets and significant adoption in emerging markets, as new and evolving payment systems enable greater access to the e-commerce landscape, which together will create opportunities.
The market researcher noted that payment vendors can help growth in the market by simplifying and integrating processes to make them as seamless as possible. Jupiter expects global e-commerce payment transaction value to reach $8 trillion by 2027 with the Far East and China representing the largest chunk of that figure followed by North America then Western Europe.
E-commerce sellers need to understand the variety of payment options in the market including buy now, pay later as well as which payment methods are more attractive to their customers. Given the cost and complexity of integrating a large number of options, merchants should strategically select which payment methods best support their objectives.
The report urged e-commerce payment vendors to offer dashboards and data visualizations to their smaller customers. At present, many small and medium enterprises lack access to good customer analytics, Juniper notes, and this data could highlight consumer purchasing behaviors, as well as provide insights into payment method popularity and fraud. By offering additional services to SMEs, e-commerce payment vendors can differentiate their portfolios in an increasingly competitive and commoditized market.
In addition, omnichannel excellence requires an extreme focus on value creation. Market leaders are reconsidering their strategic and customer priorities and deciding their position from an omnichannel perspective.
Still, the omnichannel experience can become a potential security challenge, as it opens up the company to more instances in which they can be attacked. Sophisticated cybercriminals often remain a step ahead in their ability to exploit payment systems, and the challenge is not only to have robust authentication methods in place but also to ensure that all touchpoints are hardened, including account recovery for all channels.
Even with that, the report asserted that younger consumers are most enthusiastic about new ways of shopping. As they come to the fore, and encourage their elders to try new e-commerce functions and features, younger consumers are ignoring traditional channel boundaries as they increasingly evaluate brands and retailers on the seamlessness of their shopping and payment experience.
Juniper Research author Cara Malone pointed out, “E-commerce providers must understand their customer bases to a greater extent: offering the payment options customers want and removing undesirable options. In practice, this means working with e-commerce payment platforms that do not only understand and support the most common payment types in each country but also recognize how these vary by vertical and target demographic. Understanding this can substantially improve the payments experience.”
