How to engage, serve, and delight your customer – it’s the primary mission of your business. With increasingly complex influences on today’s consumers, understanding what they want is an ongoing quest.
To figure this out, I had the opportunity to host three experts in the world of consumer payments at Thrive Venice. Sophia Furber, Fintech Research Analyst EMEA from S&P Global joined Melissa Shields, Chairman of PaymentsEd, and Gali Henchal, Global Heads of Payments Partnerships at Klarna joined myself on stage for a thorough discussion of this question.
What we found is that the answer is far more nuanced than 'just frictionless.'
Payments should just work easily
High-speed internet, mobile-first services, and next-day delivery have all primed the modern consumer to expect convenience as a given. Expectations of payments are no different. This poses an extra set of challenges for merchants, of course, given the diversification of payment types in recent years.
Paying with a preferred payment method
“They want to pay in their method of choice,” noted Sophia. “That's really, really important to the consumer of today, and that's very specific to country and region. Merchants who are succeeding in Europe are the ones that are offering the right local payment methods”
“We're increasingly seeing consumers, when they shop online, want to see a buy now, pay later option,” she added, citing that 25% of consumers in the US said that the availability of BNPL or the ability to split payments will make them more likely to transact with a merchant.
“Insufficient funds is a real issue,” explained Melissa, underscoring the importance of flexible credit options in amongst traditional payment methods. “As spending behaviors and different credential types become more popular, having support for orchestration for a backup payment method like buy now, pay later is going to be super helpful.”
Automatically addressing false declines
Sophia pointed out that nearly one in three (29%) consumers surveyed in the US in 2025 said that they had abandoned a purchase in the past six months because of a false decline.
How can merchants enable a smooth payment experience? Optimizing the checkout experience is a multi-pronged mission: you need excellent payment design and validation and a robust technical payments setup. “Having a rock-solid optimization strategy is key – and addressing the false declines piece,” Sophia advises. “We're seeing a lot of merchants using network tokens now, with some very positive results.”
Network tokens can help reduce payment failures caused by expired cards, because the card network automatically renews the underlying payment credential when the previous one expires. This means your customer doesn’t have to look around for a new set of card details when they just want to pay and move on with their day.
Learn more: Get a conversion-boosting payment experience
Payments should be safe
The amount of money lost to online payment fraud worldwide is expected to more than double between 2023 and 2029. And customers are increasingly attuned to the risks of cybercrime.
“Younger generations are very aware that the fraudsters are also using artificial intelligence,” Gali said, arguing that extra security steps at the payment stage are “welcome and expected” as long as they’re not overly inconvenient.
Embracing “good” friction
“Sometimes merchants can underestimate the tolerance a consumer has for additional security steps at checkout,” opined Sophia. Indeed, 76% of consumers are willing to perform additional security steps at checkout, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“I see more and more merchants starting to add a little bit more friction – but I call it good friction,” said Melissa. “It's there for a reason, and it actually garners trust versus stopping somebody from checking out.”
“In the past five years, we have moved from an industry where frictionless was seen as something very desirable in the consumer journey to a reality where consumers are very heavily aware of fraud, and they are happy to see those guardrails in place,” Sophia added.
Learn more: Reduce payment failure from soft declines
Using biometric data for easier buying
Mobile overtook desktop as the most popular online shopping device in 2023, and is predicted to take even greater share as the years go by. Yet, cart abandonment rates for mobile devices are the highest of any device type – 86% of consumers using a mobile leave checkout before completion. That leaves plenty of room for lost sales – and missed revenue.
This struggle contrasts sharply with many mobile-first economies where the lack of traditional banking infrastructure has fueled a rapid "leapfrogging" of payment technology. In markets like China and Kenya, for instance, mobile payment adoption has far surpassed that of card payments. Necessity has driven consumers in these regions to rapidly accept and expect high-security mobile solutions, demonstrating that a seamless experience and robust security can and must coexist.
Yet, these devices are equipped with built-in methods of easy data collection; a payment with biometrics can increase the security of payments while making it easier and faster to check out.
Consumers are “much more open to multifactor authentication and to biometric confirms” than many merchants assume, according to Melissa. She argues Gen Z and Gen Alpha, in particular, are willing to share their data in exchange for an improved experience. “I believe that we could start to employ more secure technologies that might have been shunned in the past because consumers are willing to accept it,” she emphasized.
Well-connected payment experiences
No one gets out of bed ready to make a great credit card payment that day. Instead, their focus is on the underlying task, such as ordering takeout or preparing for a party. To win, payments must be woven into these experiences. That means thinking from a customer’s perspective on how to integrate payments into your business.
Almost one in three (30%) consumers check online deals on their phone while shopping in-store. This speaks to an awareness of possibly missing out on deals online, and vice versa when shopping online. “You want to work out the FOMO in your favor,” noted Gali, who advises getting creative with connecting the in-store and digital payment experiences. “If there is an offer in store, allow [the customer] to scan that product in-store and then pay flexibly online”.
After all, many customers pay in-store with contactless on mobile, so it’s not too much of a stretch to expect them to pay via another online payment method using mobile.
This blurring of boundaries between in-store and online purchasing is taking shape even more in the world of AI and agentic commerce.
Rise of the AI shopping assistants
Our research found a quarter (24%) of UK and US consumers have used AI to assist with purchases/personal gifting due to the convenience of having everything handled automatically. This shows a decent appetite for artificial intelligence tools that make life easier.
“Agentic is real, it’s coming, it’s already here,” said Melissa, citing how 34% of Gen Z use AI chatbots for search.
Retailers such as Walmart and Carrefour are developing AI assistants that aim to bridge online and physical shopping experiences. For instance, Walmart’s AI agents are correcting order issues and sending deliveries when customers access online support.
Following in the footsteps of Amazon Go, supermarket chain Carrefour has “grab-and-go” AI technology in several stores, where customers are automatically charged for physical products as they walk out of the store. Carrefour has gradually opened new stores between 2023 and 2025, suggesting decent demand for so-called “autonomous retail” in Europe.
While it won’t make sense for all merchants to mimic such a setup, there are certainly a range of ways in which AI can enhance online buying experiences. At Checkout.com, we’re building the infrastructure to enable secure and trusted payments using AI agents.
For its part, Klarna is using agentic commerce to “develop greater stickiness with our customers,” per Gali. “We are working to develop our own assistant that can enable seamless shopping end-to-end, all the way from search to actually paying for it.”
The future of payments
Mindful of deepfakes, Sophia mentioned a need for ongoing vigilance around emerging types of cybercrime. “There needs to be a lot more education around fraud and who you trust and what trust is. I think we're going to be having a lot of conversations about trust,” she said.
Beyond that, panelists saw a brighter future in terms of digital technology meeting consumer needs even more closely. For her part, Melissa foretold “seamless contextual commerce” as a future trend, meaning the use of tokens to run “multiparty transactions which are simple, transparent and frictionless”. She predicts AI agents will form a natural extension to the parties currently involved in secure payments.
“This trend of personalization will definitely grow exponentially,” predicted Gali. “There will be a world in which when I show up to transact, there will be tailored payment options for me based on what I prefer, and some ability to take on installments that are personalized to my financial profile and abilities.”
From flexible credit to the rise of AI agents, payments are no longer a back-office function. They are the front door to a successful consumer relationship.
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