The Future of U-Commerce: Optimizing Secure, Seamless Checkout

PayPal or Venmo? Apple Pay or Google Pay? Subscribe and save or buy now, pay later? Shoppers today have a plethora of payment options — and increasingly expect to be able to pay however they want, wherever they want, and whenever they want.  

This creates new challenges for merchants today. Is it possible to give customers all the choices they desire — while keeping the checkout process simple? Is it possible to make the shopping experience speedier — while preventing security risks? 

Those are the pressing questions that came up during a recent episode of Total Retail Tech Insights. In this half-hour talk, Radial’s Director of Payments David Roessler and Director of Fraud Services Michael Habermann shared their expertise with Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan, dissecting everything from the latest fraud review processes to the future of u-commerce. 

Here are the key takeaways. 

Speed up the check-out process while preventing fraud 

A long or frustrating check-out process leads to annoyed customers and abandoned shopping carts. But making the experience too easy and simple can mean leaving out important checks and balances, thus leaving the system vulnerable to fraud. That’s where payment facilitators like Radial come in to help businesses strike the right balance, eliminating unnecessary extra steps and enhancing customer familiarity with the entire checkout process, all while providing end-to-end fraud management and brand protection. This keeps customers happy while keeping fraudsters out.  

Choose your payment options strategically 

Customers like having choices, but not all choices are created equal — which means merchants need to be selective when deciding which payment options to offer. For example, when choosing a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service, you should consider not only how much customer adoption a service has but also how much flexibility the service offers. Some customers might want to make payments over 12 months, while others might prefer 36. Know your customer base and offer the payment options that best meet their expectations and needs. 

Don’t assume all digital wallet transactions are legitimate 

Digital wallets have taken off for good reason. They offer an easy, frictionless customer experience and come with strong customer authentication to boot. That said, fraudsters can and will take advantage of any holes in the system. This means businesses still need to take a layered approach to fraud prevention, conducting thorough data analysis across the board by looking at fraud in chargeback trends. Effective digital wallet fraud prevention requires taking a balanced, multi-faceted approach through machine learning and developing specific rule strategies related to these transactions.  

Get up to speed on 3D Secure (3DS) payments 

3DS is a technology created to make transactions safer by letting the credit card issuer, the merchant, and the consumer exchange data before validating a transaction. Unfortunately, the first version of 3DS was rather clunky, making the customer jump through too many hoops to make a purchase. Today’s new and improved 3DS offers a much more efficient experience — and is likely to soon get adopted on a much bigger scale. After all, merchants who use it can avoid liability for fraud or chargeback loss while benefiting from customer confidence and loyalty. In the future, regulations could require the use of the 3DS customer authentication in some areas, so forward-thinking businesses would benefit from getting familiar with it now. 

Provide a unified checkout experience 

In the age of u-commerce, people can shop anywhere and everywhere. A customer might read reviews of a product on their laptop at work, see ads scrolling Instagram while commuting home, then pop into a physical store on the weekend to make the purchase. So giving the customer the same shopping experience and providing familiarity across devices, on the web, and in stores will become increasingly important. A unified payment process that ties all these together is a crucial part of this evolved shopping experience.  

Partner with a payment facilitator 

Providing a smooth payment experience while preventing fraud is a delicate balancing act. To create the ideal system, a partnership with a payment facilitator like Radial can be invaluable. Radial makes complex payment processes simple for businesses, offering merchants more payment options, providing redundancies to prevent downtime, and optimizing processes while taking care of the burden of management. And as the leader in omnichannel commerce technologies and operations, Radial offers not only payment options and fraud protection but also eCommerce logistics and fulfillment, giving merchants a full suite of services to help grow their business.  

To learn more about the future of payment systems and u-commerce, listen to the full podcast at Total Retail Tech Insights.