Digital payments now account for two-thirds of global e-commerce transaction value, reaching $18.7 trillion in 2025 according to Gr4vy. Within that, Expensify reports that 69% of all credit card purchases happen online, with mobile accounting for 32% of those transactions.
Despite the clear move toward online digital payment processing, many businesses are still saddled with outdated checkout flows that create friction for users and lost revenue for the merchant. From cart abandonment to failed transactions, small inefficiencies compound quickly and have a big impact on the top and bottom lines.
What if you could resolve most of this friction without compromising on fraud protection or regional compliance? That’s what smart online credit card processing promises.
Let’s explore what’s causing friction, what it costs you, and how smarter solutions from Antom can help.
Payment friction refers to the points in your online checkout where buyers hesitate, abandon their purchase, or experience errors. It can be visual, technical, or procedural. And often, it’s invisible until you start tracking the right data.
Every second added to your checkout increases the likelihood of a customer dropping off. But friction doesn’t just lower your conversion rate. It raises your cost per acquisition and inflates processing fees due to retries or declines.
Globally, the Baymard Institute found that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is over 70%. Many of these abandonments are linked to complex checkout forms, lack of preferred payment methods, and authentication delays.
Even with the best-designed checkout flow, friction can still creep in from multiple sources. Often it’s not just one issue but a series of small blockers that add up. These come from both the visible user experience and the behind-the-scenes processes that drive how payments are verified, routed, and authorised.
Measures like one-time passwords (OTPs), address verification, and 3-D Secure (3DS) were designed to reduce fraud. But if handled poorly, they can frustrate genuine users. Inflexible 3DS flows often cause unnecessary drop-off.
Friction often begins where your user interacts with your brand most directly: the checkout form. If that form feels clumsy or takes too long to complete, it creates hesitation. Fields that don't autofill, mandatory registration, or non-responsive layouts can discourage even the most motivated buyer. And on mobile, the stakes are even higher. Tap errors, zooming, and unnecessary scrolling all contribute to abandonment. Clunky mobile experiences, non-responsive design, and repetitive data entry are some of the main offenders. If your checkout isn't intuitive, customers won’t finish it.
Not all declines are equal. Some are due to expired cards or insufficient funds, but many are avoidable. Cross-border payments often get flagged by banks unfamiliar with the merchant's acquiring bank. Fraud tools that aren't calibrated to local norms can reject legitimate buyers. All of this adds up to missed revenue, often without clear signals for the merchant.
Smarter online credit card payment processing solutions
Antom’s approach to card processing goes beyond basic transaction routing. Its tools are designed to remove unnecessary steps, prevent failures before they happen, and adapt dynamically to user and transaction risk. From tokenisation to smart authentication, everything is built to reduce friction without compromising on control or compliance.
Storing card details securely using tokenisation means your customers don’t have to re-enter their information every time. Antom supports vaulted cards across multiple payment methods, reducing steps and improving conversion.
Instead of triggering 3DS for every transaction, Antom evaluates risk signals to decide when additional verification is genuinely needed. That means lower friction without compromising on fraud protection.
Whether your users are checking out via app, mobile browser, or WAP, Antom’s checkout adapts to the format. It supports native mobile SDKs and responsive components for smooth, device-friendly payment flows.
Not every customer wants to pay with a card. In many regions, wallets and bank transfers dominate. Antom supports 300+ local and global payment methods to match regional preferences.
When you give users the option to pay using their preferred method (card, wallet, bank) you remove friction by default. Better acceptance mix = higher conversions.
Cards may be cheap to process but can result in higher drop-off. Wallets may carry slightly higher fees, but improve payment success rates. With Antom, you can track and balance this trade-off at checkout.
Using domestic acquiring routes improves bank approval rates and avoids excessive cross-border interchange. Antom supports local acquiring in 40+ countries to help reduce costs and boost success.
Antom’s payment gateway supports web, app (for iOS and Android), and hybrid channels through a single integration. That means you can launch new methods faster and simplify maintenance.
Failed payments don’t have to be final. With tools like Auto Retry and Pay Evaluation, Antom helps you recover revenue by retrying at optimal times.
With subscription billing and Auto Debit, Antom helps you reduce churn and failed charges by managing recurring transactions more intelligently.
Knowing where friction happens is only useful if you can measure and act on it. The following metrics offer a clear view of how your checkout performs, what may be slowing payments down, and where to optimise next.
|
Metric |
What it shows |
|
Approval rate |
The percentage of attempted payments successfully authorised. A low rate may indicate issues with acquiring, fraud filters, or expired cards. |
|
Time to complete payment |
How long it takes a customer to finish payment once they start checkout. Longer times often signal form friction or latency issues. |
|
Cart abandonment rate |
The share of users who initiate checkout but don’t complete it. This reflects overall friction in the payment experience. |
|
False decline rate |
Payments rejected despite being legitimate. High rates point to overly aggressive fraud prevention. |
|
Chargeback rate |
Indicates how often customers dispute charges. This affects revenue and can reflect both fraud and UX issues. |
|
Payment error rate |
Tracks technical or process failures during the payment attempt. Useful for identifying bugs or configuration problems. |
|
Customer feedback |
Direct signals from users, often revealing friction points not captured in data alone. Useful for qualitative insights. |
Once you've identified areas of friction, the next step is acting on them. Many improvements are low-effort and high-impact, particularly when they focus on how users interact with your checkout.
Below are several best practices that help reduce friction without overhauling your entire system: