The X Factor you need to combat online shopping cart abandonment

With nearly 10 million daily active internet users in India being added every month and close to 100% of the country's pin codes having witnessed online commerce adoption, there is no looking back from here. India is today the fastest-growing e-commerce market in the world and is expected to reach annual gross merchandise value of $350 billion by 2030. ¹

The stage is set for Indian retailers to reap in the benefits of this burgeoning e-commerce market where the country's young and aspirational middle class, increasing smartphone penetration and rising digital literacy are all favorable factors driving the next wave of growth in the sector.

If you are a retailer reading this, now is the time, this is your moment to Go Omnichannel!

Having said that, the competition is intense in the online space, and your customers are spoilt for choices. Remember: Brand Allegiance is Dead in this Era of the Aware Consumers.

So, what can you do to stay ahead in the online commerce space where the consumer attention span is so less?

Enabling a seamless payment checkout experience is often the most neglected of aspects for an online store. This assumes significant importance considering that one of the biggest pain points for merchants in India today and in fact anywhere else in the world is addressing the menace of online shopping cart abandonment.

Research has shown that complicated checkout processes, trust issues, and fewer payment choices are some of the key reasons for online shopping cart abandonment.

You got to build the online payments infrastructure of the future and the good news is that we have taken that vital first step for you with the launch of Plural, our foray in online payments space. You have trusted Pine Labs all these years, now Try Plural to believe it.

With Plural, we have introduced three secure, speedier and simple online payment products that will amplify your online presence and give your customers no reason to abandon the cart on account of fewer payment choices or transaction failures.

Plural Gateway is a payment aggregator and the single integration you need to enable multiple payment options at the checkout including debit/credit card, net banking, wallet, and UPI. Not to forget the added convenience of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) or EMI purchases that your customers will love. After all, you want the shopping carts to get bigger, don't you?

We also launched Plural Checkout. With features like automatic OTP processing, contextual keypad display, and auto scroll/zoom capabilities, this mobile SDK is just what you need to make online checkouts speedier and seamless for your customers. A must-have considering India's social commerce gross merchandise value (GMV) was at ~US$ 2 billion in 2020 and by 2025 is expected to reach US$ 20 billion, with a potential to reach US$ 70 billion by 2030 owing to high mobile usage, as per a Bain & Company report.

Our third offering under the newly launched Plural brand is Plural Console. What we are aiming to offer with Plural Console is a robust payment router allowing you to integrate multiple payment aggregators and gateways via a single integration. This will allow you to set payment routing rules across aggregators to improve conversions and offer a global card vault to your customers for a faster checkout experience. Based on availability and other parameters, ranking preference can be assigned, and you can also use our smart routing module to set preferences across various payment gateways based on their features.

The fact that Pine Labs is PCI- DSS and PA-DSS compliant means that all your payment-related data is handled according to the global payment security and safety standards.

The Plural integration will optimise the checkout experience and give your customers the experience of a faster, safer and much simpler payment system and ensure that the checkout cart abandonment rates are not impacted. Add to that the convenience of affordability that you are offering to your customers through the BNPL EMI integration. If you are looking for that offline to online transition in this new year, we'd say you are thinking on the right lines, as the future is not singular, it is Plural.

¹ https://www.investindia.gov.in/sector/retail-e-commerce/e-commerce