Payment choice holds the customers for whom the method decides, so find them first
The study PYMNTS published with Checkout.com in October 2021, built on its Checkout Conversion Index, carried the headline that 60% of consumers would move to a different merchant when their preferred payment method was not available. The index rests on a test of the checkouts of more than 500 online merchants and a survey of US consumers. The data describes American shoppers in 2021. It still makes a point about loyalty that travels, provided the 60% is read for what it is.
PYMNTS later described the 60% as a combined figure, in an article on a follow-up report drawn from the same index. According to that article, 13% of consumers said the availability of payment methods was the single biggest factor that could lead them to change merchants. Combined, 60% counted a missing preferred method among the important factors. Read together, the two figures suggest that for most of those shoppers payment choice is part of the overall verdict on a shop, while for about one in eight it is the verdict.
Important for many, decisive for a few
Both figures are statements of intent in a survey. Nobody observed these shoppers leaving a shop because a method was missing. Even so, the split changes how payment choice works as a loyalty lever. A shopper who names it as one factor will weigh it against price, delivery and habit, and may stay with a shop that lacks their method if everything else is right. A shopper who names it as the deciding factor will not. That smaller group is where the lever has real force, in both directions. Accept their method and they have a reason to return. Remove it and you have given them the reason to leave, without any competitor having to do anything.
The useful question is therefore not how many methods your checkout offers, but which of your customers belong to that smaller group, and which method holds them.
A method count says little outside its own market
PYMNTS also reported that top-performing merchants offered 7.8 payment methods on average. Read that against the market it came from. In the same index, the methods consumers most commonly said they used were credit cards (43%), debit cards (37%) and PayPal (20%). In a market like that, a long list of methods is largely a matter of covering card brands and wallets for one dominant way of paying.
The Dutch picture is different. The Dutch Payments Association reports that iDEAL accounts for 71% of online purchases, against 8% for credit cards and 5% for direct debits. One method covers most shoppers, and the rest of the list serves smaller groups: a shopper from abroad with a card, a customer who prefers to pay after delivery, a business buyer who needs an invoice. These are examples of where the deciding group may sit in a Dutch shop, not findings of the survey. They have one thing in common. Each is a minority in your order data, and each may be loyal to your shop for the very reason that their method is there.
That is the trap in reviewing a payment list by volume. A method used for 3% of orders looks like a candidate for removal or for a place behind a link. If that 3% is a group of repeat customers who buy from you because you accept it, removing it creates exactly the switch the index warned about, and the loss will not appear as an abandoned cart. It appears as a customer who simply does not come back.
The method a customer returns for has to stay recognisable
Loyalty to a payment method is also loyalty to a name and a screen. Since the index was published, the main Dutch method has begun to change its name. Dutch shoppers have seen the combined iDEAL | Wero logo since early 2026. According to EPI, the company behind Wero, all Dutch issuing banks were to be connected to Wero in October 2026, after which iDEAL payments would move to Wero’s infrastructure step by step, with the migration to be completed by 31 December 2027. A customer who comes back for the method they always use should find it under the name and logo they now know, at the top of the list, without having to work out whether it is still the same thing.
The same holds for the smaller methods. If a customer paid with a particular method on their last three orders, the payment step can show that method first for them when they are logged in, while the full list stays one tap away. That is not a stored card or a vault, only a remembered preference, and it tells a returning customer straight away that the reason they came back is still there.
Look at repeat orders per method before you change the list
Export the orders of the last twelve months and group them by payment method. For each method, note the number of customers, the share of those customers who ordered more than once, and the countries they ordered from. Compare each method’s repeat share with your shop average. A method with a small share of orders but a repeat share well above average is serving a loyal group, and it should stay visible, with a recognisable name, whatever its volume. Make this table the first step before any method is removed, renamed or moved down the list.
Sources: pymnts.com, pymnts.com, pymnts.com, betaalvereniging.nl, epicompany.eu
