Enhancing Each Step of the Retail Customer Journey with Payment Solutions

Meeting — or exceeding — consumers’ expectations throughout the retail customer journey is good business. According to Statista, 54% of consumers in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. agreed or strongly agreed that they’d be willing to pay more for great consumer experiences. On the other hand, customers continue to grow more intolerant of poor experiences, which impacts a retailer’s ability to build loyalty and grow. Furthermore, unhappy customers can share the details of retail experiences on social media, which can discourage other consumers from shopping with that brand.

So, to maximize sales and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, competitive retailers are actively exploring ways to optimize retail customer journeys. In 2025, that may include researching how artificial intelligence (AI) can quickly analyze data to personalize interactions or automate processes to deliver faster, more efficient service. However, an often-overlooked but highly effective way to increase customer satisfaction is to expand and enhance digital payment acceptance.

Elevate Consumer Experience Throughout the Store with Innovative Payment Solutions

A robust payments solution can empower merchants to enhance experiences at various touchpoints in today’s retail customer journeys, including:

• Payment Choice in the Lane or at the Counter

Payment choice enhances customer experiences. Retailers who accept the payment methods that their customers prefer to use can capture more revenues and build loyalty. Accepting digital wallets, now numbering 2.7 billion worldwide and poised to grow to 4.8 billion by 2025, has become a necessity for retailers. Retailers can meet demand for these fast, easy, and convenient tap-to-pay payments with payment devices equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology that captures payment data from digital wallets.

However, merchants can also implement SoftPOS, which allows them to accept contactless payments on tablets or mobile devices that they use in their operations — no additional payment device is required. SoftPOS results in a quick contactless payment implementation, an expanded customer service footprint, and a lower payments total cost of ownership. Furthermore, SoftPOS is a practical backup solution, allowing merchants to continue to accept digital payments during network disruptions so the customer journey concludes without delay.

Although contactless payment adoption is a prevalent trend, retailers must accept all payment methods that their market and consumers use. European commerce is a prime illustration. In this region, 25% of European transactions involve credit cards, 14% are bank transfers, 10% are buy now, pay later (BNPL), and 8% are direct debit. These retailers also need to accept country-specific payment methods, including alternative payments to offer the experiences their customers want. Payment terminals, particularly Android terminals running on a flexible payments platform, give retailers the freedom to accept all popular payment methods in their region.

Retailers can also expand payments functionality to create unique, customer-pleasing experiences, for example, by managing loyalty rewards, offering digital receipts, or automatically converting currency right on the Android terminal.

• Mobile Point of Sale

An effective way to increase customer satisfaction is to eliminate queues. Waiting in line elicits negative feelings like boredom, annoyance, and frustration — the opposite of feelings retailers need to associate with their brands to capture market share.

The solution is to provide customer service and complete transactions anywhere in the store with mobile payment terminals. When a shopper finds the ideal garment, retailers can take payment right near the fitting room. Sales associates can complete transactions in the aisles to avoid bottlenecks during peak seasons. Additionally, customers arriving at the store for click-and-collect purchases can add to their orders easily when an employee with a mobile payment device assists them. The result is a customer journey that ends with positive impressions — and more of a likelihood that the customer will shop at the store again.

• Unattended Payments

According to RBR Data Services global self-checkout installations will reach 2 million by 2029. Consumers also expect unattended payment options in a wide range of places, from fuel stations, EV charging stations, vending machines, and micro-markets to parking facilities and transit ticketing. As a result, unattended payment installations will increase consumer adoption — and the expectation that retailers will offer self-service options.

Enhancing experiences at this touchpoint on the customer journey requires deploying devices designed for public use, robust enough for reliable performance, even in harsh environments. Unattended devices must also be intuitive, so that they can be easily used without any training, and provide the right consumer experience.

An essential part of self-service payment solutions is a way to manage them. A payment service that monitors unattended payment devices ensures they are operational, not unexpectedly offline (which could indicate tampering), updated, and ready to provide reliable performance that contributes to optimal consumer experiences.

The key to Payment Solutions that Enrich the Consumer Experience

It’s easy to see the benefits of enhanced payment experiences wherever customers choose to engage. However, implementing standalone or siloed solutions can lead to complexity and disjointed consumer experiences rather than the seamless omnichannel functionality and consistency that customers demand.

The solution is to work with a forward-thinking payment technology company that has developed a framework that supports all the functionality necessary to delight customers today and the flexibility to adapt as consumer behaviors, industry standards, and technology evolve in the future. An innovative payments platform also empowers merchants with visibility and management into their payment device estates so they can maintain, update, and upload new features, ensuring PIN pads and payment terminals perform optimally every time a customer is ready to transact.

Coupled with payment devices built from the ground up for security, an innovative payments platform expands retailers’ capabilities to secure payment data with a balanced, multi-layered approach including advanced encryption, tokenization, and fraud prevention. Merchants benefit by maintaining a trustworthy reputation, and consumers can shop with confidence that the brands they choose are doing all they can to protect their data and their privacy.

Take the Next Step Toward Enhanced Customer Journeys

Partnering with a payment technology company that understands the importance of perfecting consumer experiences will benefit retailers looking for a competitive edge. Ingenico stands apart among payment technology companies by providing solutions for every touchpoint in the customer journey and a comprehensive, flexible platform for managing, enhancing, and securing them. Contact us to learn more about leveraging payments to elevate consumer experiences and your competitiveness.

See Our Retail Solutions at EuroCIS

Ingenico will be at EuroCIS, February 18-20, 2025, in Dusseldorf to showcase our retail solutions in Hall 9, Stand D46. EuroCIS attendees can see our range of AXIUM Android Terminals including the all-in-one, large-screen AXIUM CX9000 for ease in running business applications, the AXIUM SX series of unattended devices for self-service payments, new payment applications, and Ingenico’s SoftPOS.

Ingenico’s advanced framework for retail solutions includes options for any business: from pay-at-counter to payment on-the-go, pay-in-lane to self-service, we have it covered. You can also talk to us about how you can achieve a 360-degree view of all your payment devices and manage them all in a centralised way. 

Our booth will also feature innovations including a new release of palm vein biometric payments on the AXIUM RX9000, and the new Kameleon terminal that changes color digitally. In addition, our partners ePay and Diggecard will display their apps that enhance payment experiences.

Stop by our booth to experience these solutions first-hand or reserve a meeting time with a member of our team.