Seamless Checkout and Unified Rewards: Transforming Digital Commerce with Method Card Connect

The checkout experience is a key part of any user journey. For ecommerce and loyalty-driven businesses alike, it’s the gateway to revenue, loyalty, and customer satisfaction. Entire teams are dedicated to improving every facet of the checkout experience, from speed and ease of use to personalization and incentives.

Despite these efforts, 70% of U.S. adults abandon their online shopping carts before completing a purchase, leaving billions in potential revenue on the table. Furthermore, even when users create merchant wallets or accounts, they often fail to connect their entire range of payment methods. This gap hampers the merchant’s ability to understand user spend across channels and foster long-term engagement.

The Problem: Hidden Challenges During Checkout Experiences

The digital checkout process has evolved from a multi-page, cumbersome experience where customers navigated through several separate pages to enter their shipping details, billing information, and payment methods to a single page checkout experience with integrated third party wallets. But there is still much left to be desired. Here are some of the most pressing pain points:

1. Friction at Guest Checkout

Checkout experiences, even well-optimized ones, often require users to manually input their credit card information, billing details, and more. This creates friction, especially for mobile users or those making 1-click purchases, and contributes to the 70% abandonment rate across most industries. Reducing friction can significantly boost conversion rates.

2. Limited Payment Credentials Visibility

Most checkout platforms only prompt for a single payment option at checkout. When credit cards are declined—which happens in 9% of transactions—shoppers are forced to restart the process, often abandoning their carts altogether—despite the fact that most shoppers have multiple active credit cards in their wallets.

3. Increased Fraud and Compliance

Card-not-present fraud, such as online and mobile checkout fraud, accounts for nearly 75% of card fraud losses. Current solutions often fail to authenticate card ownership adequately, exposing merchants to increased fraud risk. Additionally, storing card credentials and maintaining them fresh for future use demands rolling out an in-house wallet with robust and expensive security measures.

4. Underperforming In-house Wallet Experience

While many merchants encourage users to create wallets or accounts, connecting payment methods remains a pain point. Without this crucial step, merchants miss out on opportunities to drive loyalty and offer seamless payment experiences.

5. Challenges with Third-party Wallets

One-click checkout options like Apple Pay or Stripe Link are convenient but come with trade-offs. They often limit merchants’ ability to create omnichannel reward experiences, restrict access to valuable analytics for retargeting and personalization, and force users to external platforms, adding unnecessary steps to the user experience.

The Problem: Loyalty and Rewards Gap

1. Lack of Data for Personalized Offers

When merchants don’t see a customer’s full spending profile across in-store and digital channels or payment methods, they can’t serve up targeted rewards or experiences. This incomplete view undermines loyalty program engagement.

2. Inability to Reward Guest Purchases

Many loyalty programs only work if a shopper is logged in with a single credit card on file. Guest checkouts and alternative cards slip through the cracks, resulting in missed opportunities for shoppers to earn points—and for businesses to retain them.

3. No Visibility Into Omnichannel Behavior

Whether a customer is shopping online, in-store, or through a partner channel, merchants rarely have a consistent method to track and reward all transactions across different credit cards. This leads to fragmented loyalty experiences that reduce overall engagement.

The Solution: Method Card Connect

Method Card Connect transforms the checkout experience by enabling businesses to instantly authenticate and retrieve all of a user’s credit cards with just their name and phone number. 

How Method Card Connect works:

• Consented users enter their name and phone number.

• Method Card Connect authenticates the user and identifies all of their active credit cards, along with billing details.

• Active cards are presented to the consumer who selects which cards to use.

• Method passes the selected PAN/network tokens over to the partner’s processor and the cards are charged for checkout.

Let’s explore all the ways Method Card Connect can deliver a seamless checkout experience, and increase conversion and retention rates.

1. Accelerated, One-Click Checkout Within Your Experience

When Method’s APIs are integrated into the checkout flow, all of a shopper’s credit cards are authenticated and displayed using just a name and phone number. By pre-filling payment details and offering multiple card options, Method Card Connect accelerates the checkout process for every checkout.

Shoppers can choose the best card for their purchase, minimizing declines and abandoned carts. Research by Shopify and BCG shows that streamlined checkout processes can boost conversion rates by over 50%.

2. Complete Payment Credential Visibility

Merchants can display all of a user’s authenticated cards, with the ability to serve up the most frequently used card, ensuring shoppers always have a backup payment option. This flexibility fosters trust and reduces the likelihood of abandoned carts.

3. Reduced Fraud With Real-Time Scoring

Card Connect authenticates card ownership and possession using over 200 data connections in milliseconds. Real-time transaction and user scoring leverage 360-degree signals, including real-time spend across other cards, liabilities, payment history, and data from all of a user’s financial accounts. This drastically reduces the risk of fraud and boosts confidence for both merchants and consumers. By ensuring that only authenticated cards are used, merchants can minimize chargebacks and fraud-related costs.

4. Full Ownership of the Checkout Experience

Unlike third-party wallet solutions, merchants retain control over their checkout UX, loyalty branding, and data. This opens the door to truly omnichannel reward programs: awarding points and perks for all user spending, wherever it happens.

5. Build Your Wallet and Understand Your Customers

Method Card Connect makes it simple to connect all cards, enabling merchants to gain insights into customers' spending habits across cards. With this data, merchants can:

• Target users with tailored rewards.

• Design personalized offers that drive engagement.

• Create omnichannel loyalty programs that capture spending across platforms, in-store, and with partners.

6. Omnichannel View Across Channels and Cards

Unlike third-party wallet solutions that silo data, Method Card Connect empowers merchants to offer omnichannel rewards. Shoppers earn loyalty points for all spending, increasing engagement and retention. About 76% of Americans will spend more when participating in a loyalty program.

Here are just a few examples of how businesses can leverage Method Card Connect:

• Bilt Rewards: With Method Card Connect, Bilt enables its users to instantly enroll multiple credit cards for rewards. The average user enrolls at least two cards, maximizing their ability to earn points.

Method Card Connect allows Bilt customers to instantly enroll their credit cards to earn rewards with one click. The average Bilt customer enrolls at least 2 cards. 

• Rideshare Companies: Encourage customers to shift spending to partner bank cards by showcasing tailored offers and incentives based on their wallet data.

• Major Airlines: Gain visibility into customers’ full wallets to identify and target travel cardholders with personalized promotions.

• Omnichannel Merchants: Authenticate and link credit cards across online, in-store, and mobile transactions to track spending and reward loyalty seamlessly.