Swedish furniture retailer IKEA launched a partnership with Dutch payments FinTech platform Adyen.
The collaboration is designed to help IKEA better connect its in-store and digital sales channels to provide improved payment and loyalty experiences for customers, according to a Wednesday (Aug. 28) press release.
“Utilizing Adyen’s single financial technology platform to gather customer payment data from both physical and digital channels enables partners to uncover holistic customer insights within their framework,” the release said. “By gathering payment data from all sales channels on one platform, partners are able to identify shopping behaviors across channels, creating business opportunities pertaining to lifetime customer value across all categories of customer relationships.”
Adyen’s platform offers a closed-loop payment system with worldwide processing, acquiring, local payment methods and like-for-like settlement capabilities for IKEA franchisees, per the release. This reduces the amount of contracts and integrations for IT operations, for more simplified financial reporting and customer data management.
IKEA’s partnership with Adyen comes as the retailer is working to transform its image, from a suburban outpost where shoppers have to travel to pick up their furniture — and take it home to put it together — to stores offering online sales, city center locations and services like assembly.
The company is also getting into the secondhand business, setting up an online, peer-to-peer marketplace where people can buy and sell pre-owned furnishings.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS examined merchants’ efforts to capture customer loyalty earlier this week with vaulting.
“Vaulting, or securely saving customers’ payment credentials, has emerged as a game-changer for improving customer retention by addressing a common pain point: failed payments,” the report said, adding that “82% of executives struggle to pinpoint why their payments fail, due to a fragmented view of consumer data.”
This lack of insight leads to revenue losses. In the last year, eCommerce players experienced a failure rate of more than 10% for online transactions, which comes to $31 billion in lost retail sales for the third quarter of 2023.
“The ripple effect of these failed transactions extends beyond immediate revenue loss,” PYMNTS wrote. “More than two-thirds of eCommerce firms report difficulty in reclaiming customers lost due to payment issues. Vaulting addresses these challenges by providing a comprehensive view of payment data.”