Checkout abandonment is probably not a new term to you, however, for the sake of it, it refers to a situation whereby a shopper browses through a store, adds an item(s) to their cart, enters their information at the checkout, but then decides not to complete their purchase for whatever reason. 

From 2019 up to mid-2020, close to 45% of customers have abandoned a transaction during the checkout phase, compared to 24% who walked away from a purchase in a physical store.

The reasons for checkout abandonment are many, however, some include:

• Lack of customers’ preferred mode of payment.
• Declined Credit/Debit cards due to insufficient funds. - A shopper’s credit/debit card may be declined for various reasons such as an issue with the store's set up for the payment gateway.
• Insufficient account balances in their preferred mode of shopping.
• Some customers are just lazy and don't retry a transaction after a failed first attempt.

In this article, we will explore the methods that will help you reduce the most common payment issues and boost conversion rates. Moreover, throughout the entire article, I’ll share a couple of real-life conversation examples where Cartloop’s Cart Recovery Experts helped customers with either their credit cards being declined or simply not knowing there are other payment methods available.

How to Boost Conversion Rates by Reducing Payment Issues

1. Provide Multiple Payment Methods

ComScore argues that payment options largely depend on the buyer persona. As such, different buyers will prefer different payment options. Offering a variety of payment gateways will help you cut through the buyer persona, and reduce your checkout abandonment rate, hence close more sales.

Below are some recommendations of various payment gateways, all available on Shopify.

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Shopify Payments

Shopify payments provides a one in all package that allows you to accept a variety of payment options from different providers, while giving your customers the freedom to pay through their most preferred method, streamlining the customer checkout process and ensuring you close more sales.

The number of payment gateways available for your Shopify store will vary depending on your location. For instance:

1. Businesses located in the United States can accept payments in Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, Discover, and Diners Club debit and credit cards.
2. Businesses in Australia, Hong Kong SAR China, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, and the United Kingdom can accept payments in Visa, MasterCard, and American Express debit and credit cards.

Further, Shopify payments are only available to stores in certain countries. Check out this guide to see if Shopify Payments is available for your store.

Aside from streamlining the checkout process by providing various payment gateways, using Shopify Payments also has a number of other benefits, including:

• It eliminates the hassle of having to set up a third-party payment processor.
• Shopify sends you pay notifications every time a payment is sent to your bank, hence keeping you in the loop every time a transaction is banked
• It has a test mode feature that allows you to test how your customers pay for their orders, and how you and your staff process those orders. This will help you determine which Payments Gateways are the best for you.

To set up Shopify payments, you only need an active Shopify store and the following information:

1. Your Employer Identification Number (EIN)
2. Your banking information
3. The average price of your orders
4. The average shipping time of your orders

Depending on your store’s location, additional information may be required.

To set up Shopify Payments, follow the following steps.

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payment providers.
2. Activate Shopify Payments in one of the following ways:

• If you haven't set up a credit card payment provider on your account, then click the Complete account setup in the Shopify Payments section.
• If you have a different credit card payment provider enabled, then click Activate Shopify Payments in the Shopify Payments box, and then Activate Shopify Payments in the dialog. This removes any other credit card payment provider from your account.
• Enter the required details about your store and your banking information, then click Save

Paypal 

PayPal is a widely accepted payment gateway. In Shopify, it allows you to receive payments through different options including credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit (only available for customers with PayPal accounts in the USA and United Kingdom), or PayPal account balances. You can also use PayPal to pay your Shopify bills.

Note: 

• Unless you have Shopify Payments activated, you will be charged transaction fees every time a customer makes a purchase using PayPal.
• To use PayPal, you will need to upgrade your PayPal Personal Account to a PayPal Business Account.
• When using PayPal, you can also allow customers who don’t have a PayPal account to pay, (Guest payments). To use this feature, you will need to have linked your bank account with your PayPal Business account. Click here to learn more about guest payments.

To start accepting payments using PayPal, follow the following procedures.

• From your Shopify admin panel, go to Settings > Payment Providers.
• In the PayPal section, click Deactivate.
• Click Deactivate again to confirm.
• In the PayPal section, select your PayPal account type.
• Click Activate.
• Enter the email address for your PayPal account, then click Next.
• Enter the password for your PayPal account, then click login -Make sure you are using the email address you want to be linked to your store.
• On the PayPal permissions page, click I Give Permission -You may not see this page if your store is already set up.
• On the PayPal confirmation page, click Go back to Shopify.
• Make a test transaction to make sure everything is set up properly.

Keep in mind that when you set up your Shopify store, Shopify automatically creates a PayPal Express Checkout account for the email address you used to set up your store. As such, if you have a PayPal account with that email address, then you only need to Activate PayPal and begin receiving payments. Learn more here on how to issue refunds or manually capture payments using PayPal.

Here’s how Cartloop’s Experts recovered another abandoned cart, that was due to a debit card being declined, by offering the customer another payment option, which in this case was PayPal.

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Amazon Pay

A good Payment Gateway is that which customers can trust with their credit card information. Amazon Pay is one of those platforms. Plus, the platform is seamlessly optimized for web, mobile, and voice (Alexa). Amazon Pay offers a safe and secure checkout experience backed by Amazon's technology, along with speed, through an accelerated checkout process, and boosts convenience.

To ensure seamless customer convenience, the payment process is embedded in your stores’ checkout page such that customers don’t leave your store to complete their order.

To boost speed, customers can access their shipping and payment information directly from their Amazon account. Their billing address remains private and is not shared with Shopify, nor is your product-related data shared with Amazon.

The platform is available for merchants selling in USD, GBP, JPY, and EUR  and in specific countries.

To set up Amazon Pay;

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payment providers.
2. In the Amazon Pay section, click Activate Amazon Pay.
3. Follow the instructions on the Amazon Pay website.

If you have set a custom primary domain for your Shopify store, then you need to add the associated custom URL to the Amazon Pay web settings. You can find the Amazon Pay web settings in the Login with Amazon section of Amazon Seller Central. Add the complete URL, for example, https://johns-apparel.com to Allowed JavaScript Origins.

2. Accept Payments in Installments

Aside from Payment Gateways, declined credit/debit cards, as a result of insufficient funds, or other reasons causes checkout abandonment. The below applications give your customers options to complete their purchase even with insufficient funds.

Affirm

Affirm is a buy now, pay back later kind of platform. All customers have to do is: fill their cart, choose their preferred payment schedule, and voila, the purchase is completed. It is kind of a loan, the purchase price of your product becomes a loan to the customer, along with a 10-30% simple interest, to be paid by the customer in fixed monthly instalments. So you get paid instantly, and the customer is left refinancing the loan directly to affirm.

With this purchasing model, customers are able to make purchases even with insufficient account balances and are likely to increase their order values if you have the payment model in place.

Check out how to integrate Affirm to your store here.

Below two different shoppers asked about the possibility of paying in instalments. Cartloop’s Experts were able to guide them and close the sale.

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Klarna 

Klarna is a Swedish Licensed bank revolutionizing the payment experience of buyers and merchants. The platform provides 3 options to your customers: Klarna Pay Now, Klarna Pay Later and Klarna Slice it.

Klarna Pay Now 

This option allows customers to pay for any items online directly from their bank account. The options are available to merchants selling in euros and operating in Austria and Germany, including merchants in Sweden selling in Swedish Krona or euros.

On the other end, only customers in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom can use this feature.

From Shopify, you are also able to capture payments manually, however, you will be charged a transaction fee.

Klarna Pay Later

Klarna Pay Later gives your customers the option to pay for their purchase anytime within 14 days after purchase. Shopify recommends that when customers use this option, you capture payments manually. When you capture a certain payment, funds are provided to you immediately by Klarna and a link, which the customer uses to pay Klarna within 14 days, is immediately emailed to the customer.

After receiving the product, the customer has another 14 days to decide whether they want to keep the product, based on Klarna’s Buyer Protection policy, and the reason why you should capture payments manually. 

Additionally, it is important that you clearly communicate your shipping timelines so that customers are aware of any possible issues that may not perfectly align with this payment method.

Also, keep in mind that when you capture payments manually, it applies to all other payment methods you have in mind and that with Klarna, you will have up to 7 days to capture the payment otherwise the payment expires and becomes void.

Klarna Slice it

This option is only available to merchants in Sweden who sell in Swedish krona or euros. To make sure that you get paid, it is advised that you capture payment immediately after they are approved. With the option, you give the customer the option to pay with financing. As such, customers have 6-36 months to pay the amount due in instalments, with or without interest. Klarna Slice It covers all fraud and financial risks that arise when offering your customers the option to pay over time.

You can read all about Klarna here.

To activate Klarna:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payment providers.
2. If Shopify Payments isn't set up yet, then click the Complete account setup and complete the registration page.
3. In the Shopify Payments section, click Manage.
4. In Payment options, toggle the payment options that you want to change.
5. Click Save.

Please note: Klarna's payment options are enabled by default when you set up Shopify Payments. Klarna reviews your business before you can accept payments through their payment options. After Klarna approves your business, customers can check out using Klarna. You can adjust which Klarna options are available to your customers at any time.

AfterPay

AfterPay allows customers to shop and pay for their purchase late in 4 instalments due every 2 weeks.

How does it work for the retailer?

• Customers shop, then select AfterPay at Checkout.
• After selecting AfterPay, they fill in a short form to get instant approval.
• Upon Approval, AfterPay pays you the full purchase amount instantly to let you ship the products.
• AfterPay splits the total cost into 4-equal instalments to be paid every 2 weeks by the customer.
• If customers pay on time, there are no additional costs on their end.

Check out this blog on how to integrate AfterPay into your Shopify store.
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3. Provide Instant Support

Checkout abandonment is not just influenced by insufficient funds or payment gateways. Remember that some customers are lazy and as such, in the event of any simple checkout challenge, they will abandon the whole process altogether. 

On the other hand, long or complicated checkout processes will make customers leave your store without making any purchase. A recent study found out that a whole $62 Billion is lost by US Businesses each year due to bad customer experiences.  Such experiences could be as a result of your failure to offer that much needed, and timely support thus causing customers to chuck the whole purchase process. 

Why? Because they're lazy, they're busy doing a million other things, their attention span is shorter than you think, they're not sure that re-trying a payment may  actually work - so they leave for good. Incentivising them only goes so far. 

Sharing a discount code in an attempt to get them back may work, but it's not solving the root problem: the payment being declined. 

In the examples below, the root problem was actually coming from the bank, which blocked the shoppers' transactions. Cartloop's Experts managed to recover these carts by providing real-time actionable advice.

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So what's the solution? No one likes waiting a few days for a support ticket, so give them real-time options to easily reach out to you: 

- Text message

- Phone 

- Live chat 

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TIP: Make all the contact options clearly visible on your website, in your emails, on social media — and let them know they can reach out to you via text (if that's an option). 

Something as simple as asking them to retry using another payment method goes a long way in making them come back. 

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Key Takeaways

• Offer a variety of payment methods so as to increase the likelihood of cutting through any customers’ payment preferences.
• Accept payments in instalments so as to reduce the risk of declined cards, hence more sales.
• Offer instant and conversational customer support to not only close a sale but also increase the likelihood of repeat purchases along with boosting customer-brand confidence.
  

Aside from ensuring customer convenience, some payment methods may not be the best solution for all merchants given your different customer base. Adopting multiple payment methods along with stellar customer support will allow you to test out what works and what doesn’t work for your customers.

The question is, would you rather lose a customer during their browsing process or at checkout? 

With Cartloop, you can reduce your cart abandonment rates 10x more than with any other automation tool, all while gathering real-time insights and customer feedback. Start your 7-day unlimited free trial today.