As one of the side effects of the huge, accelerated growth of ecommerce in the last half a year is the expanding use of digital wallets — one of the most innovative payment solutions in recent times that can be integrated with many Salesforce Commerce Cloud payment cartridges.
Research has now shown that over half of us have purchased or received a digital gift card — particularly within the last few months, as companies have had to adapt to meet consumers where they are shopping and how they are shopping.
And while it remains unclear as to the short and medium term regarding the commerce landscape — whether in the best case scenario shops and restaurants, brands and retailers will be soon fully open to provide its customers with in-store experiences like before, or whether everything remains largely as it has been lately with restricted store access and a focus on digital — the use and growth of digital wallets is likely to remain.
If you’re not too familiar with them, a digital wallet is a replica of your physical version with the data encrypted for security. It removes the necessity to keep on re-entering your personal information every time you want to purchase something online — making online shopping smoother and faster.
Pre-pandemic
If you contrast the situation to last year, digital wallets were largely left in the pockets of consumers. Less than 38% said that they were using digital wallets to make purchases. And added to this was the fact that just 29% of people were even interested in using a digital wallet; only 6% were registered as very interested.
And the main stumbling block for interest to permeate among consumers was the clear lack of knowledge about how they work; how safe they are to use; the clear benefits that they have; and which digital wallets are better than others to suit their wants.
Then with the monumental disruptions to commerce, more and more online shoppers tentatively took to digital wallets. They started to realize how user friendly they are, and how convenient they become for purchasing products online — no more patting your pockets wondering where your physical wallet is to double check your debit card number and security code.
So it’s likely that these newcomers to the digital wallet may in fact prefer this type of payment, to make it one of their regular methods of payment — whether we remain under lockdown or not.
And so the onus is on companies to provide wallets as an alternative method of payment for goods bought online. And when you host your ecommerce site on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, integrating digital wallets is a quick and simple process.
PS: UV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware) development teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.
