For businesses operating e-commerce stores in India, mastering Shopify and WooCommerce payment integration is central to success. Reports highlight that digitality is enhancing the financial inclusion of the unbanked population of the country, estimating a significant boost to global commerce.
The acceleration of digital payment adoption, rising customer expectations, and the need for mobile-first experiences necessitate that businesses ramp up their Shopify payment gateway capabilities. Innovation in payment methods, security, compliance, and streamlining transaction processes defines the future of payments in India.
As today’s customers expect fast, secure, and flexible checkouts, platforms like Pine Labs are stepping up to give businesses a future-ready edge in payments.
Why the future of payments demands adaptability
Adaptability and resilience sit at the center of payments in the future as consumer preferences (and regulations) keep evolving and changing. UPI is now a payment mainstay, while BNPL is surging in adoption as contactless payments catch up with other methods.
Indian shoppers are accustomed to switching brands due to substandard payment experiences. A Baymard report highlights that customers often abandon their carts because the checkout process is too long or complicated. This number only underscores that businesses can’t afford any friction at checkout.
Increasing penetration of digital payments has also proportionately increased payment fraud. Online businesses must establish strong PCI-DSS compliance with future-forward security methods like tokenization and multifactor authentication.
As the number of digital shoppers increases, businesses must equip their checkouts with scalable, mobile-first payment gateways that offer multiple payment method options. This is an essential step to remain relevant and in competition in the future.
Key trends shaping the future of e-commerce payments
Five key trends drive the future of e-commerce payments:
1. Rise of UPI and real-time payments
India is a global leader in real-time transactions (UPI). A PwC report highlights that UPI accounts for a significant percentage of the overall retail digital payments in the country.
This rise and penetration stem from UPI and real-time payments’ simplicity, convenience, mobile-friendliness, and high-trust transactions.
2. BNPL and EMI preferences
Young Indians are more attracted to payment options like BNPL and flexible EMIs, causing them to leapfrog traditional card payments altogether.
According to Ken Research, India’s population is slowly moving towards BNPL instead of using cards. This is especially applicable to the Tier 2/3 cities that drive online sales, with the majority of shoppers preferring apps to shop online.
3. Mobile-first and contactless growth
A majority of e-commerce transactions in India are initiated and completed on mobile phones. Contactless payments have also experienced a surge, driven by the momentum of the pandemic. Convenient online payment methods like UPI, mobile wallets, and BNPL facilitate this.
4. Smarter fraud detection and compliance
Digital adoption also increases payment risks and fraud, such as chargebacks to businesses. RBI regulations now require tokenization and advanced adaptive authentication for all digital transactions.
AI-driven systems monitor, filter, and identify risky transactions for added safety.
For Shopify and WooCommerce, payment gateways must now support PC-DSS compliance, risk screening, and dynamic fraud detection.
5. Cross-border and multi-currency needs
Shopify and WooCommerce support international commerce, enabling brands to expand beyond Indian borders and operate globally. It emphasizes the need for a multicurrency, foreign-settlement-compliant gateway with transparent fee structures.
Businesses need to stay updated with regulators’ mandates on forex margins and KYC requirements.
Challenges for Shopify and WooCommerce merchants
To be ready for the future demands from online payments, your business needs to be aware of the following challenges and prepare accordingly:
- Outdated gateways: Obsolete gateway technologies don’t provide full support for the modern payment methods like UPI, wallets, or BNPL. It increases cart abandonment on your website.
- Delayed settlements: Settlements that take longer than T+1 make it harder for businesses to reinvest their working capital during high-sales months.
- High MDR: Merchant discount rates and hidden forex charges erode your profit margins (especially for international transactions) for high-value SKUs.
- Integration conflicts: Plugin or API conflicts, poor documentation, and lack of support can hinder smooth checkout flows, generating more customer complaints and dissatisfaction.
- Security: Issues with security and compliance increase chargeback risks for businesses, may cause data leaks, damage finances, and affect brand reputation.
How Pine Labs Online powers the future of payments
Pine Labs is a modernized payments infrastructure that empowers businesses to orchestrate online payments on their terms:
A. Future-ready integrations
Pine Labs offers continuously tested, reliable, and quick-to-deploy plugins for Shopify and WooCommerce pay. You don’t need to know custom coding or do guesswork for compatibility.
Pine Lab’s API-first architecture ensures your platform upgrades easily as the payment rails evolve.
B. Support for UPI, BNPL, EMI, wallets
With Pine Labs, your business can accept any payment type through a single system. Provide UPI, cards, wallets, EMI, BNPL, and more – all through the best payment gateway for WooCommerce in the industry.
Never lose a sale to the lack of payment methods again.
C. Faster settlements (T+1)
Pine Labs offers T+1 settlement timelines for Shopify and WooCommerce payments in India. This empowers your business to accelerate cash flows, pay vendors faster, and scale without waiting for days for the sum you are owed.
You get more flexibility with your cash flows this way.
D. Scale and uptime reliability
Pine Labs is a highly scalable platform offering you high uptime SLAs and a reliable, scalable infrastructure. Conduct payments with advanced load balancing, sandbox testing, and more to ensure high success rates.
Offer fast and reliable checkouts to customers even during peak or festive seasons.
E. Security and compliance
Pine Labs is inherently PCI-DSS compliant with end-to-end tokenization for all transactions. The AI-powered risk protection detects transaction anomalies and protects your customers’ and your data effectively.
Pine Labs solutions are pre-certified for RBI requirements, giving you the peace of mind you need regarding compliance.
Best practices for staying future-ready
It is easy to maintain payment gateway hygiene for smoother checkouts and higher success rates with the following best practices:
- Test your payment flows regularly across devices, browsers, and operating systems to catch integration issues early.
- Include a variety of local and global payment methods like UPI, cards, and wallets to attract more shoppers to your store.
- Continuously monitor payment analytics for churn, failure rates, and bottlenecks in the payment gateway. Employ smart routing or auto-retries for peak hours.
- Always conduct a backend stress test to ensure that your payment system can handle high traffic loads.
- Partner with future-ready gateways like Pine Labs that are designed for Indian businesses and integrate well with Shopify and WooCommerce pay.
Conclusion: The future of e-commerce payments is now
E-commerce payments in India are progressing at a rapid pace. They are UPI-powered, mobile-first, and even more flexible than standard EMIs. For Shopify and WooCommerce businesses, future growth will bank heavily on checkout experiences as customers and the regulatory landscape evolve.
By partnering with Pine Labs, you can optimize your payment systems for today’s needs and for future trends.
Are you ready to upgrade your payment stack and embrace the future? Explore Pine Labs features and how they bring speed, reliability, and compliance to your payments with WooCommerce and Shopify.
Contact the team today to see this change in real-time.