Today In Data: Missed Sales, Unredeemed Rewards And Fraudulent Travel Expenses

Today in PYMNTS’ data, retailers are missing out on sales opportunities, billions in customer loyalty reward points go unredeemed each year, underwriting and risk management capabilities are severely underdeveloped, it’s taking longer to purchase subscription packages and business travel expenses are potentially riddled with fraud.

Here are the numbers:

$200 billion | Value of missed retail sales opportunities for merchants in the U.S. These missed opportunities are the result of shopping cart frictions in eCommerce purchasing, according to the findings of the latest PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker™, powered by WePay. The tracker highlights the latest platform developments from providers, including shopping cart features to keep customers committed to the sale and new approaches to cross-border subscription transactions.

$160 billion | Annual value of unredeemed rewards points in customer loyalty programs. Those points could go a long way to making customers happy and helping brands create sticky relationships with them. Technology may be able to act as a salve and savior, making it easier for consumers to visit in-store or shop online and find what they want, when they want it.

145 million | Number of customers who could be served under the LendingPoint/Lending Hero merger, which combines the former’s credit underwriting and risk management knowledge with the latter’s established expertise in point-of-need, point-of-sale financing. This group of customers has very particular points of need, according to LendingPoint CEO Tom Burnside, including underwriting and risk management capabilities that are severely underdeveloped.

156.4 | Average number of seconds it takes for consumers to sign up for a subscription service, up 49.2 seconds from Q3 2017, according to PYMNTS’ latest Subscription Commerce Conversion Index™, a Recurly collaboration. The report surveyed numerous merchants to find out what the top-performing retailers are doing right, and where all merchants could be making changes to ease point-of-sale frictions and improve customer experiences.

12.8 percent | Portion of business travel expenses that are potentially fraudulent, according to 2016 research by travel and expense management firm Captio. Analysts said the most common tactic to commit fraud was submitting old expense reports as new, or expensing transactions that occurred on a weekend. Separate analysis from JPMorgan in 2015 found $1 billion of the $186 billion spent on business travel expenses in the U.S. was fraudulent.