Build the payment step for the shopper who has saved nothing
Most checkouts are tuned for the customer the team knows best: logged in, address on file, card stored, one tap to pay. The shopper who decides whether a webshop grows is someone else. They arrive for the first time, often from an ad, and have no reason yet to trust the site with anything. A survey published in March 2025 by the fintech provider payabl., covering consumers in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, shows how few shoppers are prepared to start out as a stored-credential customer.
Only 16% of Dutch respondents were willing to have their payment details kept by whichever webshop they buy from, so that later purchases go faster. In Germany the figure was 15%, in the UK 25%. The question was about every retailer without distinction, and that is the point. A shopper who says no is not refusing stored details everywhere, only refusing to grant them by default. A brand someone orders from every month may earn that permission. A shop seen for the first time through an ad will not get it.
The first order has to work with nothing stored
A checkout designed around a saved card and a one-click repeat purchase helps the returning customer and does little for the newcomer. The first order has to be quick on an empty profile. That means guest checkout as a visible, equal route next to logging in, a form that asks only what delivery and payment need, and payment methods that do not require typing card details into an unfamiliar site.
In the Netherlands iDEAL | Wero does that work. The shopper selects their own bank, approves the payment and pays directly from their own account, so nothing has to be entered on your site. Put it first in the payment step under its current name and logo, so the shopper recognises it without searching. Accounts and stored details still have their place, after the first order. Offer the account on the confirmation page, once the shopper has seen that the process works and has a reason to come back.
Verification belongs inside the payment, not in the way of it
Speed and security pull against each other most visibly in the UK. In payabl.’s data, a third of British respondents would give up part of their fraud protection in return for a quicker checkout, and a quarter would scrap the checks altogether. The release also states that 71% of European consumers regard fraud protection as non-negotiable, and it describes Dutch and German shoppers as far less willing than the British to trade security for speed.
Even in the UK, then, most respondents did not ask for fewer checks. What frustrates shoppers is verification that interrupts: a step they did not expect, a redirect that loses the basket, an approval screen that does not say what it is for, a failure without an explanation. Those are design problems. Removing the check to solve them swaps a visible annoyance for fraud and disputed payments, which the shopper never sees and the webshop pays for. The work is to make the check feel like part of paying. Tell the shopper before the step that their bank may ask them to confirm, make sure the return from the bank lands on the order with the basket intact, and when a payment fails, give the reason in plain words with another method one tap away.
A bad checkout costs more than the order in front of you
The friction is not hypothetical. Asked why they had abandoned a basket in the past, 36% of Dutch respondents gave a cumbersome checkout as one of the reasons. British shoppers were the least tolerant at 44%, German shoppers the most at 29%. A middle position is no reassurance: these are shoppers who had already filled a basket.
The larger cost comes afterwards. Across the three markets, 43% of respondents told payabl. that a poor checkout experience would be enough for them to stay away from that retailer. That applies to every shopper, returning customers included. A first-time buyer simply has no earlier good experience to weigh against it. A conversion report shows the orders lost this week. It does not show the repeat orders those shoppers would have placed over the following year, and it cannot, because they never come back to be measured. The budget spent to bring them to the basket is then spent twice: once on the visit that failed, and again on the new shopper who has to replace them.
payabl.’s release gives no sample size or fieldwork dates for these figures, which were announced as part of an upcoming whitepaper on European checkouts. Treat them as a direction, not as a benchmark for your own shop. You can check the direction yourself: abandonment measured per checkout step shows where the process, rather than the shopper’s intention, loses people.
Test the first order, not the repeat one
Go through your checkout as a first-time visitor on a phone, with no account and nothing saved. Move from basket to confirmation and count the fields, the screens and every moment you have to stop and think. Repeat it with a failed payment and with a bank approval that takes longer than expected. Each point of hesitation is a point where some shoppers decide not to come back. Start with the fixes that only need a change of copy, field order or default setting, because they reach every first order at almost no cost.
Sources: payabl.com and ideal.nl
