A payment link is a checkout without the shop around it, and it deserves the same care
In an episode of the PaymentsJournal podcast published on 19 April 2022, Ashleigh DePopas, co-founder and head of GoCart, at the time a checkout product from FIS, and Don Apgar of Mercator Advisory Group discussed what makes paying online frustrating. Much of it is familiar: shoppers dislike being made to log in or create an account, and long forms with many fields distract them before they finish. The episode also quoted abandonment figures from GoCart’s own research. That research was presented without a sample, a method or a date, and the FIS page for GoCart now redirects to the site of another company, Skipify, so those figures are left aside here.
The point from the episode that has aged best was made almost in passing. DePopas said GoCart had made the experience consistent whether the shopper paid on a website, by text, by email or through a QR code. Most checkout advice is about the website. Many webshops also ask for payment outside the checkout, and those requests rarely get the attention the payment step does.
Think of the moments a payment link goes out: an order taken by customer service over the phone or in a chat, an extra charge after the shopper changes an order, a deposit for a made-to-order product, a business customer paying an invoice, a shopper whose first payment failed. Each time the shopper pays on a page with no basket, no product images and no navigation. All that is left of your checkout is the payment step, reached from a message.
On a link, trust has to be earned on the first screen
A shopper in your checkout chose to be there. A shopper opening a payment link did not; a message arrived and asked for money. The Dutch government’s advice on phishing is never to click a link in an email, text message or WhatsApp message, or scan a QR code, that you do not trust. A payment link with an unfamiliar sender name, a shortened address and a generic message asks the shopper to set that advice aside.
Give the shopper what they need to recognise the request before they tap. Send from a name they know from your shop, refer to something they did, such as the order number or yesterday’s call with your service team, and use a link address on a domain they can connect to you. The first screen after the tap should show your shop name and logo, what the payment is for and the amount, before any payment method appears. A shopper who has to wonder who is asking will often close the message and call you, or do nothing.
Show the order, not only the amount
A link page that shows a single amount and a list of logos gives the shopper nothing to check. Show the items or the service, the amount broken down where it differs from the original order, and the reason for the difference if there is one. A shopper who sees that an extra charge of €12.50 is the delivery upgrade they asked for pays it. A shopper who sees an unexplained €12.50 asks questions first.
Offer the same payment methods as in your checkout, in the same order and under the same names. A link that offers only a card form, while your checkout opens with the bank payment method most of your shoppers use, sends them back to customer service with a question they should not need to ask. Say when the link expires and what happens then, so a shopper who opens it two days later is not left on an error page.
Plan for the step where the shopper confirms the payment. On a phone that usually means switching to a banking app or confirming a card payment, then coming back. The page they return to should state plainly whether the payment went through, and the confirmation they receive afterwards should look like the one your webshop sends, with the same order number. Otherwise a paid link and an ordinary order end up as two different stories in the shopper’s inbox.
When the shopper is not in a hurry, friction shows up as days
The episode made a useful observation about healthcare and other services, where payment was still largely by paper or cheque. There is no abandoned cart when the bill has to be paid anyway, but revenue arrives later because every step is slow. Payment links behave the same way. A confusing link rarely loses the sale outright. It produces a payment three days late, a reminder, a phone call to your service team or a shopper who pays by bank transfer with the wrong reference.
That means you measure a payment link differently from a checkout. Track the time from sending to payment, the share paid without a reminder, and the share opened but not paid, and split all three by channel: email, text message and QR code. If a large share of links is opened but not paid, the first screen is the place to look. If links are paid only after a reminder, look at the message that carried them.
Start this week by collecting every template that sends a payment link, including the ones customer service sends by hand. Open each one on a phone, as the customer receives it, and check four things: whether the sender and link address are recognisable, whether the first screen says who is asking and for what, whether the payment methods match your checkout, and whether the confirmation matches your normal order email. Fix the template you send most often first.
Sources: paymentsjournal.com, rijksoverheid.nl
