April 10, 2025
In a modern digital world, it has never been more important for retailers to provide customers with frictionless and flexible payment options. Adopting a unified payments ecosystem helps businesses streamline transactions, enhance customer experience, and reduce operational costs, ultimately driving growth and competitiveness.
From buying a coffee on the morning commute to subscribing to another streaming service, payments are an integral part of everyday life. In today’s digital world, payments have expanded far beyond just cash and card – contactless, digital wallets, cross-border and account-to-account transactions are increasingly common.
Regardless of payment method, customers expect fast, flexible and seamless experiences – whether they’re signing up for a new gym membership in person, ordering a washing machine online or picking up a click-and-collect order in store.
With rising customer expectations and growing payment options, commerce businesses are losing customers at checkout because of outdated systems. These organisations need modern payment strategies to keep customers satisfied, increase operational efficiencies and remain competitive.
In our latest industry whitepaper, “Beyond trends: A guide to payments innovation and implementation”, our experts explored five key trends currently shaping the payment landscape and how businesses can stay ahead of the curve – starting with embracing a unified payments ecosystem.
With a small number of payment options, merchants traditionally operated a siloed payment system, with transaction and customer data fragmented across multiple systems. But as payment methods diversify, these silos can quickly become costly and inefficient.
A unified payments ecosystem consolidates all payment channels – in-store, online, mobile and call centres – into a single platform, eliminating these siloes. With centralised transaction management, businesses can streamline orders, refunds and cancellations with a simplified reconciliation process. By unifying all payment data in one source, businesses can also unlock insights into customer preferences and operations that can drive revenue opportunities or further efficiency gains.
Consumers demand variety in payment options, and businesses that don’t offer flexibility risk losing sales. A 2024 Paysafe survey found that 43% of consumers have abandoned online shopping carts because their preferred payment method wasn’t available. Unified payment systems enable businesses to support traditional and emerging payment methods across all channels. This is particularly key for younger consumers, such as Gen Z and Millennials, who are increasingly embracing digital wallets (36%) and cryptocurrencies (8%).
Customers expect frictionless transactions across all touchpoints in the purchasing journey. A unified payments system enables businesses to offer essential omnichannel services, such as Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS) or Buy Online, Return In Store (BORIS). With 44% of people preferring to buy online and use cash to complete the transaction in-store, it’s important to combine the convenience of online shopping with the immediacy of in-store pickups. Businesses offering these seamless options not only enhance customer convenience and reduce fulfillment or delivery costs but also increase basket sizes, in some cases by up to 20%, as in-store collections often lead to additional purchases.
Maintaining multiple siloed payment systems is expensive. By consolidating payment transactions through a single system, businesses can unlock volume-based discounts on transaction fees and cut maintenance costs. Accounting and reconciliation processes are also simplified, minimising errors and administrative overheads, with a streamlined approach allowing resources to be allocated more efficiently.
With all data consolidated into one unified payment system, merchants gain a powerful tool to further enhance customer experience and operational efficiency. Hyper-personalised promotions and targeted offers help improve engagement and drive higher conversion rates with more frequent purchases, informed by accurate insights into purchasing behaviour and trends. Fraud prevention can also be strengthened as merchants use consolidated data to identify and analyse suspicious activity across all payment channels.
To fully gain the benefits of a unified payments ecosystem, businesses should focus on four key strategies during implementation.
Outdated, disconnected payment systems can no longer keep pace with modern retail needs. Adopting a unified payments ecosystem not only improves business efficiencies and cost savings but also enhances customer experiences and unlocks new revenue opportunities.
At Equal Experts, we help global retailers modernise their payment infrastructure with expert guidance and implementation support. We’ve helped retailers, including John Lewis, Pret a Manger and Waitrose, navigate complex challenges and seize emerging opportunities.
Explore more payment industry trends in our industry whitepaper or contact our team to find out how modernising your payment technology can empower your business and give you a competitive advantage.
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