Payment Options

The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly had a major impact on U.S. consumer lifestyles and purchase behavior, including how, when and where consumers are making purchases. Many consumers expect changes in their purchase behavior will be here to stay, even after the seemingly never-ending pandemic subsides. Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) and payments industry consultancy The…

Despite the sweeping changes the pandemic has made to our economy, today’s e-commerce brands are well-positioned to capture — or recapture — shoppers just in time for the holiday shopping season. During the pandemic, retail giants such as Amazon.com and Walmart reported astounding growth in e-commerce sales as consumers used online shopping as their new…

The shift from brick-and-mortar to online retail has become a clear trend as small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) pivot to keep up with rapidly changing regulations and consumer needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And, according to a new study from OFX of over 600 small businesses, SMBs aren’t stopping at simply shifting to online operations.…

Thanksgiving dinner, jingle bells, gingerbread, New Year celebrations — even amid a pandemic, the “most wonderful time of the year” is fast approaching. And even though social distancing will likely still be in effect, people will still be excited to celebrate and come together, even getting creative about office holiday parties. There are a lot…

The 2019 holiday season feels like a lifetime ago, in a robust economy and pre-pandemic. Taking a look back, we see that initial retail forecasts were lackluster, with analysts predicting a downturn from 2018. Final figures belied those early grim predictions, however, with the National Retail Federation (NRF) confirming that retail sales for the last…

Customer retention requires a well-balanced blend of gilt-edge experience and customization. While merchants cannot control offline challenges like supply chain disruption or last-mile delivery issues, they can (and must) shape the digital environment and ensure a seamless checkout process. Merchants serving a global audience need an added layer of personalization, tailoring their payment method offering…

Several months isn’t a long time, but it’s enough to totally transform the grocery store experience. Because of COVID-19, many shoppers who used to go to a grocery store every few days or even every day are suddenly thinking twice about going at all. A typical trip to the supermarket involved looking at and touching…

Imagine a post-pandemic moment: walking into your favorite café, lining up and scanning the menu, and seeing the price of your latte in a different currency than you’re used to — British pounds or Japanese yen, for example. If you’re in a rush, you might just turn around and go to another café where the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has recently accelerated the adoption of “contactless” technologies. Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms have scaled massively, and employers are now anticipating an era when working from home is normal rather than an exception to the rule. Universities are contemplating e-learning being almost as core to their curriculum as on-campus classes. And the…

To suggest that COVID-19 has transformed the future of business would be too obvious. But in certain industries like retail, it's hard to fathom just how much change the pandemic has ignited. The crisis has expedited society further into the digital world; technology that was predicted to be adopted in five years is now on…