More and more consumers are replacing traditional physical cards with digital payments, like Cash App, Google Pay or Apple Pay. According to research from Capital One, 53% of consumers used digital payments more frequently than other payment options and 60% of the global population is expected to use digital payments by 2026.
So as more shoppers go digital, businesses that accept digital wallet payments are staying ahead of the curve. Offering digital wallets as a payment option doesn’t just make payments more convenient. It can also help reduce fraud and increase customer retention.
Read on to see why you should consider accepting digital payments from your subscribers:
4 benefits of accepting digital wallet payments
Allow mobile payments more easily
Most likely, your readers are reading some, if not most, of your digital content on their phones. And when you’re promoting a subscription email or SMS, many of your recipients are reading those on their phones as well.
So your payment infrastructure needs to be mobile-optimized as well. And that’s where digital wallets come in clutch: They let subscribers pay with just a few clicks — no need to fish out cards or enter long numbers.
And your audience doesn’t need to wait until they have access to their desktop to manage key parts of their subscription, like updating their credit card information or adding new products/services to their subscription.
Increase conversions and sales
Digital wallets minimize friction during checkout, which reduces cart abandonments and leads to higher conversion rates. A seamless checkout process that supports a variety of payment methods helps remove barriers that might keep your audience from converting and becoming long-term subscribers.
Keep your subscribers’ payments safe
Most of the advantages we’ve mentioned so far center on convenience. But are digital wallets safe?
Quick answer: yes. Digital wallets are actually considered safer than physical cards because mobile payments are highly encrypted and tokenized (meaning that no actual card or account numbers are stored in the digital wallet).
Here’s how it works: When someone adds their credit card information to a digital wallet, that data gets converted into a unique code via encryption that can only be accessed by authorized entities.
Digital wallets then take that sensitive encrypted data and replace it with a non-sensitive digital equivalent known as a token. These unique tokens are randomly generated every time a user makes a payment and only the merchant’s payment gateway can match this token to accept the payment.
This keeps your subscribers’ credit card or banking information totally invisible to outsiders. So even if your database is breached, your subscribers’ payment information is safe.
Improve subscriber retention and lifetime value by accepting digital wallet payments
Your current subscribers are your most reliable source of engagement and revenue. So you can’t afford to lose your subscribers to preventable errors — like a clunky payment process. But letting your audience pay via their phones means they’re less likely to forget to renew due to inconvenience, which increases retention and each subscriber’s average lifetime value.
Accepting digital wallet payments doesn’t just make your audience’s lives easier. It also benefits your business in the form of improved conversion rates, stronger security, and higher retention. That’s why we’re rolling out a new integration with Stripe, which will allow you to accept payments from popular digital wallets including Cash App, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
