Why APMs

Building a business case for accepting alternative payment methods (APMs)

Users want making a purchase to be as frictionless as possible. There will be many reasons a user decides not to complete a sale, including unexpected costs, being forced to create an account, or being made to complete long-winded forms. But with most people using just one or two payment methods, if their preferred option is not available, they may abandon their cart, even if the rest of the checkout process was well optimised.

It can be tempting for merchants to add as many alternative payment methods as possible to prevent visitors from abandoning their cart upon realising their preferred payment method is not available. With cart abandonment rates averaging almost 75%, it’s no wonder that merchants want to do everything they can to prevent a shopper from leaving their site at the last minute.

When looking to expand into a new territory, in addition to reviewing purchase data to identify the countries from which increased revenue is coming, merchants should conduct an analysis of the countries in which they are seeing the biggest increases in traffic using web analytics platforms (such as Google Analytics).

Then, once the countries driving the most traffic have been identified, merchants should look at where users are dropping out of the conversion funnel. This will allow them to begin building a picture of where a lack of payment options might be causing an issue. From here, merchants can research the most popular payment methods in each country and focus on implementing them as a priority.