There’s no doubt about it: Ecommerce has transformed the payment experience, fundamentally changing the way merchants and customers interact. Today, powerful payment technologies continue to evolve at a rapid pace to meet changing consumer preferences for fast and frictionless online transactions.
Want to make 2025 one of your best sales years ever? Staying up-to-date on the latest payment processing trends in online payments, not to mention digital wallet and mobile payments, will be one of the keys to successfully signing and retaining merchants.
Below, we’ll touch on what we see as being some of the top trends in online payments this year. Once you help merchants tap into these trends, they’ll be well on their way to increasing customer satisfaction while you’ll be increasing your profitability.
Let’s look at some of the key trends currently shaping the future of ecommerce transactions as the new year kicks off.
One online payment method that is more prevalent than ever these days is BNPL, which allows consumers to make payments over time in the form of installments. BNPL is particularly popular among Gen Z and millennials who tend to purchase things for which they don’t necessarily have cash on hand.
By equipping merchants to offer flexible BNPL options at checkout, you’ll help them attract more of these consumers to their business. They’ll be capturing a larger share of the market, and you’ll be demonstrating the added value you bring to your relationship as a trusted payments professional. That’s a win-win.
Now more than ever, we must all be vigilant when it comes to protecting sensitive customer credit card data from would-be cybercriminals. That’s especially true regarding credit and debit card payments made over the internet, where it’s harder to verify a cardholder’s identity since the card is not present.
Fortunately, up-to-the-minute advancements in technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are allowing payment companies to detect and prevent fraud before it occurs. By helping merchants flag potentially fraudulent transactions in real time, you’ll be helping safeguard the merchant’s business and customers simultaneously.
Today’s shoppers expect brands to provide them with personalized customer experiences. This means offering customer service with a personal touch, while also giving them the ability to use their preferred payment methods—contactless payments, mobile wallet payments, digital payment methods like ACH, and so forth.
You can also help your merchants with ecommerce platforms implement a customer loyalty program, recommend additional products/services based on past purchases, securely save customer payment details for faster checkout, and more. The greater the personalization, the happier your merchants’ customers will be.
Another digital payment trend to be aware of in 2025 is the continued rise of social commerce. The practice of buying and selling goods and services directly on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest is getting more popular with merchants and their customers each and every year.
Help merchants tap into this readily available revenue stream by enabling them to securely and seamlessly accept digital payment methods directly from their customers on their social media sites. It’s a great way to help them increase revenue.
According to statista.com, the market size for global influencer marketing has more than tripled since 2019. Having said that, while peer-to-peer recommendations from influencers carry weight with consumers, they are starting to tune out endorsements and product placements that feel too sell-y.
Therefore, it’s more important than ever that merchants create influencer marketing campaigns that feel authentic and natural. When crafted correctly and employed strategically, these influencer partnerships can really move the needle as far as increasing a brand’s sales.
We expect to see significant growth in voice commerce in 2025 with solutions offering increased personalization and more seamless integration. Virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant will continue to evolve and voice-enabled shopping, powered by voice search optimization, will become more popular than ever.
Shoppers can already get personalized recommendations, place orders, and track their packages using only their voices and without ever reaching for their wallets. Before we know it, voice commerce will be a completely mainstream checkout process for merchants to offer consumers.
Electronic payments that are processed within seconds are called real-time payments. This type of payment, used for peer-to-peer money transfers on apps like Zelle, Venmo, and Cash App, is convenient in that it can not only be made quickly but at any time, 24/7.
In 2025, we expect real-time payments to continue to be popular among businesses, governments, insurers, and more. The Gen Z demographic in particular will continue to embrace this payment method enthusiastically.
Customers like the convenience of recurring deliveries paired with personalized experiences. They also desire more consistent purchasing experiences. Meanwhile, merchants enjoy the more predictable cash flow recurring/subscription-based payments generate. These are just two of the reasons that you’re likely to be offering merchants solutions for these types of payments more than ever in 2025.
Subscription payments allow merchants to create personalized experiences for their customers based on their individual preferences. In 2025, Agents will continue to be tasked with helping merchants navigate the complexities of handling cancellations, refunds, and customer retention strategies.
While one of the limitations of ecommerce historically has been the inability of the customer to view/try on/put their hands on/test out a product in person before buying, AR is beginning to change that.
In fact, both augmented reality and virtual reality (VR) are already being used to allow shoppers to try on clothing virtually, see products in real-world settings, and more. These technologies, which bridge the gap between product and ecommerce consumers, will only continue to explode in popularity in 2025.
You can take this to the bank: This year, more than ever before, merchants’ customers will expect to seamlessly transition from browsing for items on their phone or wearable, to purchasing them. Omnichannel shopping, where users engage with a brand across multiple platforms, will become the norm. Merchants will need to create consistent, cross-device checkout experiences to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty.
For Agents selling payment technology, this means offering access to payment gateways that are device-agnostic. You can also expect a stronger emphasis on mobile, contactless, and multi-device-compatible payment solutions.
Ready to start growing a more profitable portfolio as a North Sales Partner. First, a few ecommerce statistics courtesy of explodingtopics.com.
The point is, there’s never been a better time to partner with North and grow your portfolio by selling the latest ecommerce solutions to merchants.
A proven industry leader since 1992, North has the tech-forward solutions merchants need to compete and win when it comes to online sales.
Want even better news?
We’re underwriting merchants in dozens of new and emerging markets. Plus, we’re the easiest payment technology company for Agents and merchants to work with. Find out for yourself. Become a North Sales Partner today.