Last updated on July 25th, 2024 at 04:22 pm

The retail checkout experience is central to the customer’s experience. Get it right, and they’ll leave happy. Get it wrong, and they’ll remember their last interaction with your brand for all the wrong reasons.

Having an optimal checkout process is the final stage of the conversion battle, and it’s critical to the success of any retail brand. Read on to learn how to create a seamless checkout experience.

The Importance of a Seamless Checkout Experience

Through our survey of nearly 600 customers, we were able to glean just how critical it is to offer a seamless checkout experience.

Our findings showed that 39% of consumers want to be able to self-checkout on their own device, and 33% want store associates to be able to check them out on a mobile device from anywhere in the store. Almost 70% want emailed receipts, and 63% expect a full array of contactless payment types. Interestingly, 26% of shoppers want to be able to make purchases through email and 22% through text message. 

It’s clear that consumers want options when it comes to making purchases, and modern, convenient ones at that.

Set the Standard with Tap to Pay

When determining how to improve the retail checkout experience, remember that customer journeys follow different routes. They might be looking to self-checkout in-store, pick up orders with one tap, receive support from a store associate, or checkout online. Regardless of how or where they want to pay, the process should be seamless.

Tap to pay, a contactless payment method that allows customers to simply tap their card or their iPhone to pay, has soared in popularity since the pandemic hit. There are several key benefits of tap to pay, including reducing friction at the counter and allowing store associates to move more quickly through transactions, thus minimizing lines in store.

A mobile point of sale (mPOS) device can take this one step further, supporting contactless payments via tap to pay from anywhere in the store. If your store associates are equipped with a mPOS device, there’s no need for customers to line up behind a register. 

Simplifying the checkout process helps to ensure a positive experience with your store and increases the likelihood of repeat business.

Collect Consumer Data to Boost Personalization

Delivering a seamless checkout experience can be impeded by how much customer data you try to manually scoop up along the way. Forcing customers to create an account before making a purchase is a good way to get them to abandon their cart. So is requesting too much information in-store at the point of sale. 

However, digital payments made through a mobile checkout system or a tap to pay transaction provide a valuable opportunity to capture customer data without any form-filling. You can also offer to send an email receipt and add them to the mailing list or loyalty program without having to request and type in an email address.

With a phone number, you can invite customers to double-opt into marketing communications or to receive updates from store associates about new products. These things will set you up to personalize your next interaction with that hopefully repeat buyer. 

Be Upfront About Additional Costs

One of the most common reasons shoppers walk away from a purchase is unexpected costs. In particular, high shipping costs can be a deal-breaker. Shipping costs should be defined upfront to avoid surprising shoppers and having them reconsider their sale with you. 

This is true online and also in-store. During an endless aisle transaction where you are ordering something for a customer in store from another location, you can let them know what delivery costs are for standard shipping, two-day, next-day, etc. That way, they can choose what suits their wallet best.

Offering free shipping, particularly if a customer spends a certain amount, is also an ideal option. Or, you can offer fulfillment options, such as buy online pickup in-store (BOPIS), curbside pickup, and ship-from-store, to eliminate shipping costs all together and give the customer even more choice.

Tap into Mixed Cart Transactions

Brands are carrying less inventory in-store these days, so it is more likely that a customer will want to buy something that’s not available. Maybe it is a shirt to go with the pants you do have on-site in their preferred size. 

No customer wants to have to complete two separate transactions, though – one for the item in their hand and one for delivery. With a mixed cart transaction, associates can sell items from their own store’s inventory and items from other locations for delivery to the customer in a single transaction. All the details of the endless aisle order, such as delivery costs, are determined in the same workflow as the on-the-spot sale.

Mixed cart transactions allow brands to consistently deliver a more seamless shopping experience. And one that is truly omnichannel––bridging the gap between digital and physical retail.

Invest in a Shopping App

A shopping app can be a very useful tool for satisfying customers who like to make purchases from their mobile phones, as it offers the best possible mobile shopping experience. 

With an app, consumers can skip the line and complete transactions on their own. In-store shoppers can utilize self-checkout to simply scan their items and pay in the app. During the pandemic, Nike launched this feature to make in-person shopping safer. Using the Nike app, shoppers can scan product barcodes to request fitting options and check themselves out.

Similarly, online shoppers can use a shopping app in “Store Mode” to pick up their online order with one tap. Pickup is the last step in the buying process for click-and-collect shoppers so you want to delight them with a really simple and easy order handover.

This level of convenience will be sure to create loyal customers.

Offer a Seamless Checkout Experience Across Channels

You must offer a seamless checkout experience wherever customers are able to make purchases. Whether a customer is in-store, on a desktop, or on a mobile phone, they shouldn’t feel like the checkout process is daunting.

An omnichannel strategy will help support a seamless checkout experience. NewStore offers omnichannel-as-a-service so that you can offer your customers an amazing shopping experience from anywhere. 

Try a demo today.

Last updated on March 23rd, 2026 at 11:10 am

Magnetic-stripe cards were the payment norm for many decades after their introduction in the early 1960s. However, fraudsters realized how easy it is to steal and clone bank account information. EMV, another payment method short for “Europay, Mastercard and Visa,” then came on the scene. Europe was an early adopter of these computer-chipped cards. Consumers instantly loved the idea of paying table-side at their favorite restaurants. Convenience is king, afterall.

While still a global standard, EMV card processing is quickly becoming outdated as more modern payment methods take over the transaction space. Below, we discuss tap to pay and how contactless cards continue to evolve.

What is Tap to Pay? 

Near field communication (NFC) technology, which allows credit cards and payment readers to communicate when they’re within a couple of inches of each other, enables tap to pay. This low-touch payment option – shoppers just tap their card to a payment reader – is growing in use from subways to coffee shops to retail stores. It’s a popular option for people who are conscious of what they touch. And while this may have been a small segment of consumers in the past, it’s more likely to be many of us now. 

Mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc. also power tap to pay. All you have to do is store your credit card or debit card information on your payment-enabled phone or wearable device. You use it at checkout the same way you would a card, except it is completely touch-free. Even more, you don’t even have to go through the hassle – which we all know it sometimes is – of locating and pulling out your physical card. 

In February 2022, Apple announced plans to introduce Tap to Pay on iPhone. This new capability will allow phone-to-phone payments between merchants and consumers. No additional hardware or payment terminal will be needed to accept Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets. It will be as easy as using an iPhone and a partner-enabled iOS app. Tap to Pay on iPhone is unlocking contactless payment acceptance at scale, making it easier for businesses of all sizes to offer tap to pay.

Benefits of Tap to Pay to the Consumer

Consumers are used to the online payment process being seamless and almost fully-automated. If it’s not just as easy to pay in-store, they’ll likely remember it as a bad experience. Friction at checkout has long been one of retail’s biggest conundrums. Shoppers are fickle and don’t have time for things that are long and complicated. They want to be able to pay quickly and conveniently. 

With tap to pay and other contactless payment options that don’t require a verification PIN or signature — and instead use touchless verification measures like Apple Face ID — you can make the overall checkout process simpler. This will also help you reduce lines and speed up average transaction times, which are vital to keeping your customers satisfied. 

Benefits of Tap to Pay to the Retailer

Many of the benefits to the consumer apply to retail brands as well. After all, a better customer experience leads to improved customer engagement and increased loyalty, which translates into more sales.

With tap to pay options in place, your store associates won’t get bogged down by typing or using additional hardware, such as physical terminals or other legacy payment technology. This will reduce how long it takes them to facilitate each transaction, boosting not only their productivity but also overall operational efficiency. You can also avoid the challenges that often come with hardware, like devices breaking, running out of battery, losing connectivity, and more. A lighter in-store tech stack is a win for your store associates and your brand aesthetic.

Contactless cards also provide protection against fraud. Each transaction has a one-time encrypted code that provides a safeguard from counterfeiting. Knowing that their personal information will never be compromised can help you quickly foster consumer trust. Security is more important to customers now than ever before, and your shoppers want to know that their data is safe in your four walls.

Tap to pay payments are also a strategic way to use the point of sale for customer capture. The information tied to the contactless payment method, such as an email address, will help build the shopper’s profile. When consumers opt-in, the brand can also seamlessly add them to their loyalty program. This has a whole host of benefits from vouchers to free gifts. Plus, you can send digital receipts without any form-filling. One less physical thing for you and the customer to handle today, and a record of purchase history in case of a return tomorrow. 

Future-Proofing Your Retail Brand 

Customers expect a seamless omnichannel experience. Whatever you offer on your ecommerce site you need to offer in your storefront. Think simplicity, speed, and safety, above all else. 

Core to achieving these things is a mobile point of sale (mPOS) system. All you need is an internet-connected device to enable transactions anywhere in your store. This includes phone-to-phone mobile checkout, which allows store associates to accept mobile payments like Apple Pay without reliance on third-party hardware. 

It can take years for a legacy POS to update to accommodate this technology or any other emerging payment method. An omnichannel POS system, on the other hand, can deploy modern payments quickly and without hassle. 

The tipping point for retail payments is here. If you don’t offer tap to pay, your consumers might be rethinking where they make purchases.