What is an omnichannel payments platform?

The connected experience: What is an omnichannel payments platform?

As a customer, have you ever tried queuing in store to return an item that you purchased online? Did the need for specific payment details such as a receipt or card number mean added complications?

And as a retailer, wouldn’t it be easier if you already had those payment details from the customer’s online transaction?

The simplest way to eliminate these complications is to integrate an omnichannel payments solution. But before we go any further, we first need to answer the question “what is an omnichannel payments platform?”

Put simply, an omnichannel payments platform is a comprehensive solution for payment processing. It integrates all of a business’ payment processes together, giving a single view of your customer interactions, while also providing revenue-driving solutions across the entirety of the payment’s ecosystem. Used properly, it can deliver an engaging, personalized and consistent customer journey across any shopping channel.

Here, we look in more detail at these platforms, as well as the opportunities and benefits they bring to businesses.

Embracing omnichannel payment solutions

The consumer landscape is now unrecognizable from that of the past. Expectations are high. Shoppers are connected and it’s never been easier to get the products and services they want, fast. Almost half of customers switch between digital and physical interactions with companies – and they expect to be able to do it seamlessly.

This shift has largely been made possible by the sheer volume of data now being shared between customer and retailer. Consider how much valuable information is passed along with payments made with mobile, digital wallets and contactless cards. To keep up with expectations, businesses need to seize this data and truly get to know their customers.

By implementing an omnichannel payments platform, payment data is unified, and you’ll gain the insight required to produce a single, accurate view of an individual shopper. This is crucial to delivering a coherent customer experience.

Take, for example, the countless marketing emails that you likely receive every day. It can be frustrating to receive multiple communications from businesses if the offers and messages aren’t meaningful to you. It can make you feel unappreciated, “just a number.”

If more businesses leveraged omnichannel payment solutions to paint a true picture of their customers’ shopping habits, goals and preferred products, they’d find it easier to target effective messaging and, potentially, see more return business.

It also helps you keep up with today’s consumers – who use an average of six touchpoints to interact with a brand. With a single view of customers, you can understand their journey and offer a personalized experience that places you in a stronger position to retain their customer.

With omnichannel making it easier to access and break down data, being able to offer customers a more personalized experience is a trend that will only grow in importance. Even now, a third of customers who end their relationship with a company do so because the experience isn’t personalized enough.

Alongside changing customer demands, technology is fast evolving too, with new payment methods continually entering the market. A fast-moving landscape needs powerful solutions – and implementing omnichannel means easily adapting to and deploying popular local payment methods, helping you expand more effectively into new markets.

Realizing the omnichannel commerce benefits

Omnichannel shoppers spend 4 percent more in store and 10 percent more online than single channel customers. But all too often, customers are left disappointed by the apparent lack of coordination and consistency in their experience.

No doubt that, as a customer, you’ve found that an item you were desperate to get hold of wasn’t available in your local store, only online and three days away by post. Alternatively, you might have discovered that a product isn’t even listed on a retailer’s online store and can only be purchased from a brick-and-mortar location miles away. If businesses are to reap the benefits of omnichannel spending habits, they need to ensure that their offering across both physical and online spaces is joined up. You need visibility over what’s happening in both your online and physical stores, in real time, as if you had one endless aisle of products to manage.

This can be achieved, again, through your omnichannel payments platform. Ensuring that every piece of stock and every transaction across every channel is accounted for, in one place, could not only make things simpler for you but improve the customer experience massively.

An omnichannel platform supports and simplifies operations for greater efficiency. And it’s particularly important in speeding up the deployment of new payment methods across markets, giving more opportunities for growth and innovation.

Turn customer transactions into connected experiences

Worldpay solves retailer challenges and is a smarter way to develop your omnichannel offering. By harnessing a tailored solution from global experts, your business will be supported in different countries and cultures.

Our omnichannel platform offers payment processing that consolidates across all channels, simplifying the technology landscape for you and creating a joined-up experience for shoppers. It means you can provide a fast, personalized service, easy checkout, and be sure of data security.

You’ll gain single global integration across markets, schemes, payment methods and platforms, reducing the number of suppliers, streamlining processes and lowering costs. And because we’re global experts, it means you’ll be able to adapt to new, popular payment methods, as they come to the fore in different markets.

If you want your customers to love you, you have to keep the shopping journey simple, wherever they are and however they like to pay. Meet these expectations with one blended experience across every channel.

See how we can support your omnichannel payments journey.