Ask the expert on SaaS – How can I simplify the payment experience?

Software as a service (SaaS) continues to capture the attention of businesses across the globe, playing a strong supporting role in many industry vertical success stories. Amazingly, from worldwide revenues of $13.4 billion in 2010, the SaaS market has accelerated to $104.7 billion in 2020 and is on track to achieve $140.6 billion by 2022.

In the North American market alone, the U.S. market was estimated to be $20.3 billion in 2020, and the Canadian market is expected to grow at 15.3% CAGR from 2020 to 2027. SaaS in China is forecast to achieve $38.7 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 17.9%, while in Europe, SaaS in Germany is forecast to grow at 12.6% CAGR.

The market for SaaS is on the rise, and it’s providing a host of benefits to the business community. However, could this growth be contributing to added complexity and a fragmented experience for businesses and end users?

What are the benefits of SaaS?

Compared with an on-premise model, SaaS can provide enhanced accessibility, scalability and security with consistent updates, as well as greatly increased collaboration capabilities.

As cloud computing continues to improve professional and personal lives, the industry is flourishing. Effective solutions that help organizations maximize the potential of their public cloud investments are commonplace. And SaaS cloud application services are likely to account for at least one-third of total public cloud revenue share for the next four years.

With so many benefits that can be realized from moving to, or building on, your SaaS model, it’s important to consider simplicity. This simplicity must be twofold. First, as the application service provider, it must be easy to use for you and your staff. Secondly, for your end customer, it must provide a frictionless user experience.

How can my SaaS model meet customer expectations?

While it makes a big difference to your business when you digitalize your processes and when your collaborative software connects chat systems to web-hosted programs and group calendars, these benefits to you are not apparent to your customers: They can’t see that level of detail. However, what is very important to them is their experience accessing your website and the ease of payment at check out.

While it’s vital that you have the right underpinnings in place, without a simple and seamless payment journey, your customers are likely to go elsewhere.

Getting the payments journey right not only requires a frictionless workflow, you also need to consider your customers’ payment preferences. Worldwide, digital wallets and alternative payment methods (APMs) like PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay, are set to rise in popularity over the next five years. The mobile payments market was valued at US$1.449 trillion in 2020 and is expected to reach US$5.399 trillion by 2026.

But preferences vary by country, with North American customers still favoring credit cards (34.4%) over digital wallets (23.7%), a preference that’s even more heavily skewed in Latin America (43.8% to 13.8%). In EMEA and APAC, digital wallets are the top choice, at 24.6% and 58.4%, respectively.

Individual countries are also bucking the regional trends. In Europe, German online shoppers prefer to use a bank transfer method, while many Russian shoppers opt for QIWI, a digital wallet.

In addition to local payment preferences, SaaS can also open global capabilities for your business. With a wider international network of customers and prospects, the opportunities are likely to expand. Thus, the provision of payment methods needs to be given even more thought.

How can I ensure a simple payment experience for international customers?

Having the right payment integration can assist in providing a smoother cross-border payment experience.

Providing your customers with the option to pay using their preferred APM could help to reduce your cart abandonment rate, and you can also allow customers to pay in their own currency to help increase a seamless, locally based transaction.

What are the key factors that I need to consider?

Consider a solution that delivers the latest payment products, with fast and simple integration and a high level of service quality. Does the solution integrate with leading recurring subscription software providers? Ideally, you may want to keep all the APMs under one payment processing relationship, too. This becomes even more important when you’re conducting international business in multiple countries with a wide array of digital wallets. But you also need to keep things simple. You need a solution that will grow with you, without requiring maintenance or major reconfiguration, even when you experience accelerated international expansion.

A solution that delivers for everyone

If you’re looking for fast, simple access to integrated payment systems, Worldpay can provide you with an advanced payment gateway that meets your needs and offers the potential for a resilient, dependable service that integrates to a single point of access.

With Worldpay, you could grow without complexity and accept global payments across a wide range of APMs and currencies. And it can all be managed under one relationship.

Simply put, not only could you use a single API to access simple integration to scalable services and rapid, data-driven product enhancements at a global scale, it could all be done while simplifying the payment stack.

And because we have existing integrations and strategic partnerships with many leading recurring subscription software providers, there’s little integration required and cartridges are already set up, ready to go.