From the moment a customer lands on your website, they expect a seamless, satisfying experience. Achieving this expectation requires collaboration across various business units, from marketing and logistics to payments. Every step of the customer journey demands advanced tools and thoughtful planning, particularly when it comes to payments.
Merchants face several challenges in this area, including combating cart abandonment, managing transaction costs, and reducing fraud exposure, all while striving to enhance customer satisfaction. Strategies must be tailored to the user’s purchase behaviour, preferred devices, geographic location, and more. Fortunately, these challenges can be effectively managed using Workflows, which bridge different elements of the payment process. Workflows enable merchants to customize interactions, ensuring the flexibility needed to meet unique customer needs while optimizing for business impact.
By implementing workflows, businesses can:
- Increase checkout conversions
- Reduce payment-related costs
- Minimize fraud exposure
- Improve operational efficiency
Understanding payment workflows
Workflows are automated, configurable, structured sequences of tasks or processes to achieve a specific outcome efficiently. They empower merchants to design tailored payment journeys for various scenarios. By configuring each step with the right executions and actions, businesses can effectively address specific pain points and enhance operational efficiency. This approach simplifies tasks such as payment acceptance, fraud management, and cash collection, ultimately increasing payment success rates.
To illustrate how workflows function, consider a typical transaction flow from beginning to end. When a customer reaches the checkout page and enters their payment details, this information is sent for authentication and fraud checks (such as 3D Secure). Once authenticated, the transaction is directed to a payment service provider (PSP) for final processing. Throughout this journey, workflows can handle additional tasks like rerouting payments if the initial attempt fails or directing transactions to local processors to reduce costs.
Let’s explore an example of a complex workflow where Payrails empowers a global merchant to enhance their payment authorization process. After expanding operations to Brazil, this merchant recognized a need for specific authorization measures to mitigate increased fraud risks. They designed a workflow that initiates a 3DS verification as the first step in the authorization process. If the 3DS verification is successful or fails outright, the transaction proceeds accordingly, and the results are finalized. However, if the 3DS check fails, the workflow automatically triggers a fraud scoring assessment. Based on this score, the payment may then either be declined, approved, or routed to an additional verification step for further evaluation.
Designing workflows for industry-specific needs
While mitigating certain challenges, like cart abandonment, are common across industries, each sector also seeks unique goals. For instance, retailers may focus on enhancing checkout conversion, while hospitality businesses must account for currency exchange complexities.
We have identified several common workflows tailored to mobility, marketplaces, hospitality and airlines, illustrating how these can help businesses achieve their most critical objectives, as well as several cross-industry workflows.
Getting started with workflows
A successful workflow design aligns payment processes with specific business goals. Rather than looping every failed payment attempt, start by defining a clear objective, such as maximizing successful payments while controlling costs. With this focus, workflows can be designed to retry payments only until a certain threshold is reached, preventing unnecessary extra fees.
To begin designing workflows, start with two essential steps. First, clarify your optimization objectives for each phase of the payment process. This includes defining payment routing logic, establishing conditions for directing transactions, and determining any additional customizations unique for your business. Such strategic approach will enhance efficiency and create a more cohesive customer experience.
Second, thoroughly test each workflow in your platform to ensure it meets your expectations. Testing is essential for verifying that the workflow performs as intended, enabling adjustments that boost performance.
Below, you will find the most important stages in the payment process along with relevant features to consider.
Transform your payment experience with Payrails
Our team of payment experts works closely with merchants to design exceptional customer experiences using our extensive payment expertise. Our modular platform empowers you to design workflows that enhance performance, lower costs, and meet revenue targets. By analyzing millions of workflows with our clients, we offer proven design patterns customized to your specific needs. Let’s collaborate to deliver outstanding experiences that your customers will truly value. Contact us today to learn more!
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