77% of Merchants Are Ready to Share Data for Smarter Checkout

Seventy-seven percent of merchants are eager to share data with payments platforms, according to PYMNTS Intelligence research. This willingness exists as payments platforms identify additional uses for the information flowing through their networks. For instance, Stripe's dynamic payment methods utilize over 100 signals to determine the most suitable payment methods for a particular checkout session.

Similarly, Adyen's Personalize service employs payments data and shopper recognition to customize the checkout process, having expanded its capabilities through the acquisition of Talon.One. These developments are driving the integration of various functions that were formerly housed in separate systems, including payment acceptance, identity, loyalty, promotions, and more.

However, the success of this data-sharing arrangement relies on merchants granting permission for their information to be shared. One challenge arises with the growing influence of AI platforms, as 23% of merchants can only roughly identify which traffic and purchases are the result of AI agents. AI services can analyze consumer intent, product comparisons, and merchant data like inventory, pricing, and margins, while payment providers observe transaction performance across their networks.

The integration of these diverse data sources during the checkout process enables smarter checkout, delivering commercial value by linking relevant data points at the moment the customer is ready to purchase. For smaller businesses, leveraging these capabilities through a payments provider is often more feasible than building the requisite data infrastructure.

Trust from merchants holds significant commercial value, as it allows payments providers to create models based on transaction activity and merchants to supply customer and commercial context to the transaction data.