If your cart abandonment rate is high, your premium pricing may not be the reason.
It’s frustrating when you sell premium products, offer great customer service and have a clean UX, but still 50 out of 100 customers leave without purchasing.
Cart abandonment comes with several whys— your job is to identify what’s wrong. Among many, one factor that dramatically impacts cart abandonment is a poor payment experience.
A shopper browsing your site for 15 minutes, adding products to the cart, and then payment fails. Or they don’t find their preferred payment option. The result? Abandoned carts and lost sales.
This post discusses the primary payment experience issues (with solutions) to help you reduce cart abandonment and win over customer trust.
Content Index
- What is the Impact of Payment Experience on Cart Abandonment?
- 7 Payment Experience Issues Behind Cart Abandonment
- Conclusion
What is the Impact of Payment Experience on Cart Abandonment?
A poor payment experience can reduce customer trust and confidence, leading them to abandon the purchase process midway. This can happen due to:
- Friction in the payment process, such as technical errors, payment declines, etc.
- Lack of preferred payment method
- Unexpected checkout charges
- No clear indication of a secure checkout
- Vague refund/exchange policies or extra charges for returns
Cart abandonment lowers the funnel efficiency and reduces ROI, as you pay to attract customers but lose revenue. Additionally, the cart items return to stock, complicating inventory planning and forecasting.
Here are a few statistics that show how payment experience affects cart abandonment:
- 54% of customers discontinue the checkout process if the payment options are limited to debit and credit cards.
2. According to the How Urban India Pays Survey 2024, 90% of respondents said they prefer digital payments for online purchases. Among them, 53% use UPI (Unified Payment Interface) and 34% use Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL).
This means that if your checkout doesn’t support UPI, BNPL, and other digital payment options, you risk losing at least 50-70 out of every 100 customers because their preferred payment method isn’t available.
3. 47% of shoppers abandon their carts due to added charges during checkout—shipping costs, taxes, and duties. For instance, several users abandon their Myntra shopping carts due to the ₹20 platform fee, especially if their chances of returning the product are high because Myntra doesn’t refund this fee.
7 Payment Experience Issues Behind Cart Abandonment
Data shows that the average cart abandonment rate is 70%, and companies lose $18 billion in sales annually to it.
A 2024 survey suggested that 41% of global online shoppers abandoned their carts due to high delivery fees and 30% due to unexpected costs at checkout. This shows that poor payment experience is among the major causes behind cart abandonment.
Here are a few payment experience issues you must look out for and how you can combat them.
Limited payment options
As discussed, shoppers are likely to drop off their carts if they don’t find their preferred payment methods. With UPI and BNPL on the rise, if you accept only debit and credit card payments, you risk losing 60% to 70% of customers.
✅ Solution: Offer diverse payment options like UPI, wallets, net banking, along with cards. Customers also suggest that merchants use reputable payment gateways and offer Apple Pay, Google Pay, and subscription offers, among other digital payment options.
Complex and glitchy checkout
According to Baymard, the average checkout flow in 2024 was 5.1 steps long, containing 11.3 form fields. And 18% of users abandoned carts due to complex checkouts. On top of it, if your checkout process is slow and glitchy, especially on mobile phones, you may lose out on significant sales.
✅Solution: Reduce friction during checkout. Shorten your forms, removing extra steps. Offer one-click checkout and optimize checkouts for smartphones. For example, give bigger buttons that are easier to tap, form autofill, and a legible font. Additionally, consider backend fixes and A/B test your checkout pages to identify customer preferences and ensure a seamless process.
🔖Want inspirational checkout page designs for seamless checkouts? Check out 22 Check Page Designs and Best Practices.
Mandatory account creation
Customers, especially first-timers, want a quick, frictionless shopping experience. And that doesn’t happen when the checkout involves forced account creation.
Suppose a customer adds items worth ₹3000 to their cart and proceeds to checkout. However, the website requires them to fill out a 6-field form—username, password, email, address, contact, and birthday—to create an account. While the customer is already eager to complete the transaction, this step can be frustrating, resulting in cart abandonment.
✅Solution: Offer guest checkout that lets shoppers complete the purchase as a guest, without signing up. Even if you want them to sign up, give it as an option and ask for essential details only, such as name, contact, and email. You can also speed up transactions by offering a “remember me” option where the site saves customer details.
Crocs India offers guest checkout for easy and faster purchases.
Payment security concerns
Digital developments have fuelled fraud rates in India. According to the 2025 Digital Banking Fraud Trends Report, Indian customers reported 3x more fraud cases in 2024 than in 2023. This makes trusting eCommerce brands more difficult.
Customers can easily abandon carts if they don’t see security badges. They may hesitate to enter their data, let alone make a purchase.
✅Solution: Ensure PCI DSS compliance to secure storage, transmission, and payment information processing. Display security badges and use phrases like “100% secure” and “end-to-end encryption” to reassure customers. Also, implement payment tokenization to protect sensitive payment information such as card details.
For instance, Urbanic uses card validation, OTP for Indian cards, and verifies card activity using pre-authorisation.
🔖Learn everything you need to know about Tokenization in India to stay compliant.
Hidden fees
Customers dislike hidden and unexpected charges popping up during checkout—delivery charges, platform fees, and handling charges. Around 48% of customers abandon their carts due to excessive shipping charges and additional fees during checkout.
For instance, shoppers abandon carts when extra shipping charges are added to low-priced products during checkout—₹75 delivery for a ₹250 product. Several users also abandon carts when they see the added platform fee and handling charges for grocery orders.
✅Solution: Show total costs early, including shipping charges, taxes, and handling fees, before the user reaches the payment page. Use auto-calculators to let users enter their PIN code and check the estimated cost. You can also bundle all extra charges into the product price and mention “no extra charges at checkout.”
For instance, Nykaa shows shipping charges on the product screen using a side panel before payment. Amazon labels certain Prime products as “inclusive of delivery and taxes.”
Transaction failures and false declines
In a survey by Pymnts, 47% of retailers cited that false transaction declines significantly impact customer satisfaction. When payments fail or get stuck and card transactions get declined, customers get frustrated and abandon their carts.
✅Solution: Streamline the checkout process by implementing input validation, clear error messages, and offering multiple payment modes. Leverage advanced fraud detection tools to identify suspicious transactions and regularly update saved customer information, including contact numbers, card details, and addresses.
🔖Make sure your payments are successful with these Tips to Increase Payment Success Rate.
Location and currency barriers
Buyers from different countries face issues like forced INR currency, conversion charges, and card restrictions, which can result in payment failures.
For instance, international buyers may abandon their carts if their currency flips to INR when shopping. Similarly, international transactions failing on Indian cards, especially on high-value transactions, may result in cart abandonment.
✅Solution: If you sell globally, use dynamic currency conversion and provide transparent rates in local currency. Clearly display accepted cards/countries, foreign exchange rules, shipping, and return policies before checkout.
Conclusion
Reducing cart abandonment is crucial to improving ROI. Sure, you can work on your product offerings to attract customers, but to retain them, provide a secure and seamless checkout experience.
A glitchy, lengthy, and limited payment experience can disappoint customers. However, if you take the necessary steps to build an intuitive and super secure payment system, you can convert new customers into brand advocates.
Offer diverse payment options, enhance security, maintain transparency, and offer a faster, error-free checkout to win over customers. Nimbbl can help you create a five-second checkout process without complex passwords or OTPs. You can ensure quick transactions and customise payment options as you want.
Want to learn more about Nimbbl to reduce your cart abandonment rates?
