Payment options variety is more and more important for eCommerce. Just relying on PayPal or a credit card processor is not enough anymore – for the sake of your conversion rate optimization. The latest player to join offers a world of benefits, so customers and merchants need to learn how to get the most out of Buy Now Pay Later Services.
Traditional Payment options: PayPal, credit card payment processing through PayPal, Authorize.net, and other payment gateways
Digital Payment providers: Google Pay, Pay with Amazon, Apple Pay, etc
Buy Now Pay Later FinTech services: Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Sezzle, Shop Pay
Traditional Payment Options
Having a default credit card processing payment service is a must for any store as some people, specifically Boomers and Generation X are more likely to use a method they are most accustomed to. PayPal is a good addition to this mix.
Digital Payment Providers
Depending on your region and your analytics, you can easily figure out what is a good addition to your payment options. Have a look in your Google Analytics – are most of your mobile customers using Android, then add Google Pay, or are they using iOS, in which case they are definitely likely to checkout using Apple Pay.
Are your customers based in the US or UK? Then odds are they already have an Amazon account so you are definitely making their experience better by adding Pay with Amazon as an option.
Buy Now Pay Later Services
Especially great for stores selling products that can get pricey, these options allow people to checkout without paying anything upfront as long as they commit to a weekly payment plan with their chosen provider. Picking the right partner will make or break the success of this option on your website.
How does Buy Now Pay Later work?
The customers won’t have to pay anything upfront and won’t have interest added to their purchases as long as they stick to the payment plan.
What’s not to love? Order a brand new $1,500 Navigation for your boat, pay nothing when you order and then slowly pay for it over the course of a few months with no interest.
Sounds a bit too good to be true? Well, the catch is that it all falls on the merchant.
The online stores end up paying for this customer-friendly payment financing alternative with typical Visa or MasterCard payment processing fees at around 3% (in the USA), while the typical buy-now-pay-later provider will charge anywhere between 4% to even 6% and other fees.
How to pick the right Buy Now Pay Later service
Go to your top 10 competitors’ websites and see what services they are using. Reach out to all those providers and get the following information:
1. How do they vet their customers? (customer sign-up process)
2. What are their customers’ payment schedules? (how do they get the payments from the customers)
3. What are the customers’ rates and fees? (understand the strengths and weaknesses since you will be actively promoting this on your site)
4. What are your rates and fees? (per transaction rates, fixed fees)
5. How do refunds work? (you refund the provider, the provider typically takes 3-45 days to refund the customer)
6. What are the payment limits? (maximum a customer can spend on your site, per transaction)
7. How do you get paid? (upfront, similar to credit card payment timelines)
8. How do they handle fraud? (will they assume all credit and fraud risk or are they passing that onto you?)
How to get the most out of Buy Now Pay Later
Once you’re signed up you’re going to get a lot of emails with a flurry of links leading you to documentation pages. Over and over we have seen clients just use the bare minimum instead of trying to get the most of their new services.
1. These services usually have pages where they help their customers to find stores that use their services. i.e. https://sezzle.com/stores
Get listed!
2. Create a how it works page on your site and add it to your website’s footer.
i.e. https://www.asos.com/payments-and-deliveries/klarna/
3. Add the Buy Now Pay Later widget correctly on your product pages, shopping cart and checkout page.
4. Update your email marketing automation considering your new addition.
i.e. Run an A/B split test and remove the Cart Abandonment incentive for carts over a certain $ amount and replace it with your Buy Now Pay Later messaging.
If you are unable to create A/B split tests on your cart abandon flows you definitely need to pick a more appropriate option for your Email Marketing efforts – read 5 Things To Look For When Selecting An Email Marketing Provider
Be excited about everything new and try to adopt it. eCommerce is about being flexible and trendy but not losing focus on who you are and what your core value proposition is. Make informed business decisions and get the most out of them.
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