PYMNTS Intelligence surveyed 300 middle-market eCommerce merchants across five countries — Australia, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States — to explore the role of technology in the user experience during checkout. The study revealed that most middle-market eCommerce businesses struggle more with the user experience during checkout than with back-end payment processing. Accordingly, merchants indicated a strong demand for technologies that enhance the user experience during checkout, particularly one-click technologies.
Drawing from the study, this series of data briefs examines how merchants in each country view the role of payment service providers (PSPs) in the user experience during checkout. This edition looks at Brazil, where more than 7 in 10 eCommerce merchants struggle with this.
Merchants in Brazil have strong appetites for technology that can improve the user experience. Roughly half of these merchants have asked their PSPs to implement new features or functions. One-click solutions are the most popular, followed by secured card on file and biometric authentication. What these technologies have in common is their ability to enhance the user experience by simplifying checkout.
These are just some of the findings explored in “The Role of PSPs in the Checkout Experience: Brazil Edition,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard collaboration.
Complementary But Distinct Goals
Brazilian merchants’ desire for higher conversation rates and an improved user experience drives their request for new technologies.
Conversion rates and user experience are the two central reasons merchants want to upgrade their checkout and payment technologies. Among respondents from Brazil who can request new features from their PSPs, 71% name higher conversion rates as a motivation. Enhancing the customer experience is the second-most popular motivation, cited by 65%. Notably, 27% of firms identify each of these factors as their top reason, far ahead of any other motivation.
Merchants in Brazil widely view a better user experience as a goal, even though it is also a means to improve conversion. PSPs stand to attract more merchants if they highlight improving the user experience alongside boosting conversion.
The Self-Service Approach
Two-thirds of Brazil’s merchants say they can request new features from their PSPs.
When it comes to upgrading payments and checkout technology, merchants in Brazil must take the lead or get left behind. Sixty-eight percent indicate they can request new technology from their PSPs, and 48% have done so. Meanwhile, 32% believe they cannot make such requests, the highest rate seen among the five countries.
Merchants in Brazil thus split into two camps. Nearly half actively monitor new payments and checkout technologies and ask their PSPs for upgrades. The rest sit idly by, often because they think they cannot ask their PSPs to add new features. In other cases, merchants may lack the resources or expertise to take a proactive approach. All this stresses the need for PSPs to improve their communication with merchants and actively offer help.
One important tool that can help merchants stay up to date with checkout and payments technologies is automatic implementation. Sixty-four percent of merchants in Brazil say that their PSPs employ this approach. That said, 36% of merchants believe their PSPs do not deploy automatic upgrades. This suggests another communication gap that leaves some merchants in the dark about important upgrades that PSPs have implemented. PSPs should ensure that merchants know when automatic upgrades occur and how to take full advantage of the new functionality.
One-Click Solutions in Demand
One-third of merchants in Brazil have asked their PSPs to enable one-click technologies.
Merchants in Brazil have a strong appetite for technologies that can speed up checkout. Thirty-four percent of the country’s respondents have asked their PSPs to implement one-click solutions, making this the most in-demand technology. Close behind follow secured card on file, at 32%, and biometric authentication, at 28%. All three of these technologies can provide customers with a faster, smoother checkout experience, boosting conversion rates.
Interestingly, few respondents from Brazil have requested gateway tokens, at 14%, or network tokens, at 12%. Although tokenization underpins one-click and secured-card-on-file technologies, merchants would need to take a technical, hands-on approach with their payments technology stack to explicitly request gateway or network tokens. These findings indicate that respondents in Brazil generally stick with turn-key style solutions.
PSPs Can Do More for Merchants
PSPs in Brazil are missing opportunities to help merchants boost conversion and improve the user experience.
PSPs are central in enabling the payment systems and checkout technologies that eCommerce merchants depend on. However, just 48% of merchants in Brazil believe that their PSPs help them create an easy and convenient user experience. In addition, just 18% of the respondents cite this as the top benefit their PSP provides. Even fewer respondents find their PSPs helpful in other areas that are important to boosting conversion. For example, 44% of Brazil’s merchants say their PSPs reduce fraud and 38% that they improve acceptance rates. Another notable gap is reducing false declines, cited by just 28% of respondents as a way their PSP adds value.
Merchants in Brazil have relatively positive views about their PSPs when it comes to basic service and accessibility. Seventy percent say their PSPs are easy to work with, and 58% say they are widely available, meaning easy to reach for requests or help. Still, these results mean that large shares of merchants believe their PSPs fail to deliver in these basic ways.
Overall, the data indicates that merchants in Brazil typically do not find their PSPs helpful in improving conversion. More broadly, PSPs are missing an opportunity to provide greater value to merchants. PSPs should review their communication strategies to ensure that merchants understand and know how to access the full suite of services and expertise they provide.
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Methodology
“The Role of PSPs in the Checkout Experience: Brazil Edition,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard collaboration, is based on a survey of 300 merchants with strong eCommerce businesses generating $10 million to $1 billion in annual revenue from five countries: Australia, Brazil, the UAE, the U.K. and the U.S. The survey was conducted from Sept. 18 to Oct. 9.
