Does your business suffer from a high cart abandonment rate? Having checked off all the causes, did you find the problem to be a slow transaction?
If yes, the issue might lie in routing. While the focus on quality, pricing, and other features got you the customer, you lost them by testing their patience or by making them feel insecure during checkout.
The solution to gain them back – Smart routing. Now, either you might be new to the term or curious about how your business can implement it effectively. Or you are still unsure whether it truly matters for your business. Be it any dilemma, here we offer the relevant insights into the topic. Hop on as we unfold the smart routing.
Understanding Smart Routing
Routing refers to the process of directing a digital payment to the most suitable payment processor, bank or gateway. With the busy customers who easily and quickly want to complete the checkout process, the routing plays a major role in conversion for the online mode of business. It helps send the customer’s transaction through the right channel with minimal resistance.
Smart Routing
Smart routing is an advanced and automated system that selects the optimal route for each transaction in real time based on the rules defined by the business.
Factors Influencing Smart Routing
It evaluates factors such as card type, issuing bank, network performance, fees, and past success rates to determine the best path. It also considers dynamic conditions for routing, which include currency, transaction cost, and customer location.
What does the business get in return?
The improvements in payment success rates, reduced costs, and enhanced customer experience.
Applications of Smart Routing
Ensuring smooth payments and supporting better revenue conversion, it is used by:
- E-commerce brands
- Travel companies
- Subscription platforms
- Fintechs
- Businesses handling high transaction volumes
- Businesses serving global customers
Role of Smart Routing in Reducing Cart Abandonment Rate
Smart routing accelerates e-commerce payment processing without compromising security. The result is a high payment success rate and satisfied customers. Let us understand this in detail:
Enhancing Payment Success Rates
The failed or declined payments frustrate the customers. Adding to it, the effort to add everything back in the cart again further leads to the lack of interest. Smart routing works at the root cause by increasing the chances of payment success.
It sends the transaction towards the processor with a high percentage of approving it. Businesses can also set the fallback processors to retry a transaction automatically.
Minimises Checkout Resistance
Slow payment processing, timeouts, and long verification steps are among the reasons for cart abandonment. Smart routing deals with the problem by selecting the fastest and most responsive payment rails in real time. It achieves so as it:
- Avoids congested or unstable networks
- Redirects transactions to an alternative processor when performance dips
- Ensures faster approvals and smoother payment flow
This creates a seamless checkout experience, encouraging customers to complete their purchases without interruption.
Strengthens Fraud Detection
Set up the fraud rules for high customer security to attract customers. What if it becomes the reason for cart abandonment? While intentions were right, the strategy was wrong. Incorporating smart routing can help navigate through it by evaluating the risk level of each transaction. Subsequently, it routes the high-risk or high-value payments through gateways with stronger fraud detection capabilities.
It does so without burdening the user with complicated security steps. This balanced approach reduces fraud exposure and lowers the false positives, leading to high customer satisfaction.
Supports Faster International Transactions
International consumers face issues like unexpected currency conversions and fees, cross-border declines, and security concerns. Smart routing evaluates foreign exchange rates, conversion charges, and regional success patterns.
It helps select the most efficient route accordingly for global payments. The result is faster approvals and transparent costs that lower international cart abandonment. Adopting smart routing, hence, converts into business growth.
Adapts to Seasonal Spikes
During flash sales, festive seasons, or promotional events, networks become overloaded. The incidence of payment failures rises sharply.
Again, smart routing assists in improving customer satisfaction. It dynamically scales and shifts traffic toward stable and high-performing gateways to maintain uninterrupted payment flow. Hence, the heavy demand season will no longer witness a spike in abandoned carts.
Improves Cost Efficiency
High processing fees or inefficient routing can force businesses to limit the number of payment methods offered at checkout. On the other hand, smart routing optimises cost efficiency by choosing the most cost-effective processing route. It may also prefer local payment routes for global transactions.
Thus, businesses can save processing costs while also offering a variety of payment choices. It improves customer convenience and reduces drop-offs caused by unavailable or unsuitable payment methods.
Conclusion
The quicker and safer the payment processing, the better the customer satisfaction rate and the lower the cart abandonment rate. Smart payment routing assists in achieving this by intelligently directing transactions through the fastest, safest, and most efficient routes. It helps businesses by:
- Increasing payment success rates
- Reducing checkout delays and failures
- Strengthening fraud prevention
- Improving global transaction efficiency
- Maintaining stable performance during peak seasons
Thus, it eliminates the resistance or challenges that may eventually lead to customer dissatisfaction and hence benefitting the customers and business.
