E-commerce merchants always look to make the online shopping experience of their customers convenient and better than ever. And it’s vital because the eCommerce market is heavily occupied and the competition is fierce. Customers have too many options to choose from which makes it important for you to stay ahead of the game and meet the demands of the customers.
Online shoppers are attracted towards the brand or the website that provides them with a smooth shopping experience, which includes certain factors such as faster loading of web pages, appealing UI, quick and simplified checkout, and mobile-friendliness. Apart from these, what consumers demand is the availability of multiple payment options, in which digital wallets have a huge role to play.
What is a Digital Wallet?
A digital wallet, also known as e-wallet, stores users’ payment information (Credit Card or Debit Card Details) on a single place and allows them to make hassle-free transactions without having to enter their card details every time.
When you make payment at a store through a mobile app, it is also a digital wallet though it is often termed as Mobile Wallet.
You can say that a digital wallet is the parent category while the mobile wallet is the child. The slight difference between both is that mobile wallet is an online payment app on your smartphone whereas digital Wallet can be found across devices including desktop, laptop and mobile.
PayPal is one of the most popular digital wallets accepted by millions of online merchants. Some other popular digital wallets that consumers make use of nowadays are Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Paytm, etc.
Why Digital Wallets are preferred over Credit Cards?
Consumers love digital wallets. As simple as that! There’s a reason why so many companies are coming forward with their owned digital wallet.
Why customers love them and why they are trending among online shoppers is simply because it makes their shopping experience convenient and effortless. They no longer need to take out their credit card or debit card from their wallet and enter their card details like card number, card validity, and security code which we also call CVV.
People do fear taking out their credit card in public which is obvious considering the theft that happens nowadays. A digital wallet eliminates that fear completely. Wherever you are, you can easily do online shopping.
Moreover, the payments made through digital wallets are highly secured. So, one doesn’t need to be concerned about their details being shared online.
Digital wallets are not only restricted to online shopping but they are accepted at maximum brick-and-mortar stores. This also eliminates the need to carry a credit card or cash whenever going outside like shopping malls or restaurants. At the checkout counter, they can simply scan the QR code through the app on their smartphone or ask the concerned person regarding the digital wallets they accept.
For a majority of customers, a digital wallet is a one-stop solution for everything, be it about shopping offline or online.
Benefits of Digital Wallets for Merchants
In the above paragraph, I have already covered the advantages of digital wallets for consumers and why they are a better option than credit cards. Let’s now understand how digital wallets can be beneficial for eCommerce retailers as well.
Gone are those days where you could grow your business by having only Credit Card and Debit Card as your payment modes. Surviving in today’s competitive eCommerce market requires integrating multiple payment options including digital wallets.
A majority of the online shoppers, even the one who shop offline, make use of digital wallets to conduct transactions. Most of the people own a smartphone and have access to the Internet and that’s why most people prefer to pay via their mobile devices.
Mobile Commerce has already gone past eCommerce in terms of conversions and sales, and it is growing every day. As per the stats collected by Statista, Mobile Commerce or m-commerce sales made a figure of 268.78 billion USD in the United States in 2019, and the number is expected to touch the 340 billion USD mark by 2020.
Conclusion
Just because Mobile Wallets/Digital Wallets have an upper hand over Credit Card and Debit Cards does not mean that you should stop accepting the latter at your online store. Some people still prefer paying through their cards than setting up a digital wallet.
Credit Cards are the old-school method and they should never be abandoned.
So the conclusion that we take out from this article is that accept both but keep your major focus on digital wallets.
We, at Knowband also offer different modules to integrate multiple payment options on your website including digital wallets. Some of the best modules that we have for this are One Page Checkout and Mobile App Builder. Do check them out. Know more: