- 23 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 12 minutes ago
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The best checkout isn’t one your customers remember. It’s the one they don’t.
In fact, some of the best experiences go unnoticed—and that's exactly the point.
When friction is reduced, steps are minimized and trust is quietly built into the buying process, your customers shouldn’t notice the checkout process. They should only feel the satisfaction of completing an order fast.
This leaves you free to focus on what you love: building your product and growing your business, not troubleshooting payment problems or wondering why customers keep abandoning their carts.
Did you know? Most checkout systems weren’t built for simplicity. But with PayPal now available directly in the Wix Payments platform checkout has become seamless and globally accessible, so merchants can provide flexible payment options without the headache.
Build an eCommerce website or learn more about online payment processing with Wix today.
The problem today: checkout fails both customers and merchants
For all the progress made in eCommerce, many times, checkout is where good experiences (and sales) die. Forrester data shows that in some regions around 70% of carts are abandoned before checkout due to friction points in the process [1] but most business owners don’t fully understand why.
For shoppers, the reasons are painfully human. According to Wix data, many hesitate or quit their shopping journeys for the same reasons:
They don’t want to create an account
They don’t have time to fill out a long, confusing form
They don’t want to answer unnecessary questions
They’re surprised by new costs
This is where millions in potential revenue disappear, not because the product is bad, but because checkout asks too much.
Yet, here’s the real surprise: only 8-12% of merchants are aware [1] of these critical pain points. Today’s small business owners are expected to wear too many hats (CFO, customer support provider, fraud detector and more), making it easy to miss what’s happening right under their noses.
“Checkout friction rarely shows up as one big problem,” says Udi Liberman, co-head of Payments at Wix. “It’s a quiet leakage: a few extra fields, one unnecessary decision, a moment of hesitation.”
Why the best checkout is the one you don’t remember
So, what’s the solution? “The best experiences don’t try to impress,” Udi suggests. “They reduce complexity and get out of the way, because every pause in the buying journey is a risk.”
That kind of seamless simplicity doesn’t happen by accident. It’s powered by technology designed to reduce friction behind the scenes.
Did you know? Checkout experiences backed by PayPal’s global network and advanced risk and fraud capabilities reduce false declines and unnecessary friction, helping more legitimate customers complete their purchase and driving higher conversion for merchants.
The trick is making checkout so smooth that customers barely notice it. And it’s not just better for customers. It keeps operations running smoothly too.
Michelle Gill, GM of small business and financial services at PayPal, puts it this way: “When checkout is seamless, it does more than convert a sale. It gives small businesses confidence that their operations are working for them, not against them.”
“When managing money becomes simpler and more connected, business owners get time back to focus on what they’re passionate about: building great products, serving customers and growing their business.”
The two pillars of a smooth, “forgettable” checkout experience
The good news is that creating a “forgettable” checkout experience isn’t as hard as it may sound. In fact, just two changes can make an immediate difference.
01. Invisible design
Invisible design is about streamlining the process and automating as much as possible so things feel effortless for the customer.
By tapping into known user data sources at the payment stage (like connecting with customers’ e-wallets) you can reduce the checkout process from many tedious steps down to a single action. There are two main ways to achieve this:
Enable express payment. Saving data for returning customers allows them to check out with only a few clicks. These methods rely on biometric authentication (like Face ID) and stored credentials, allowing buyers to bypass manual entry of credit card and shipping details entirely. Wix internal data indicates that adding express payment methods can increase conversion rates by up to 8% [2]. According to PayPal, one place where this design philosophy comes to life is simple authentication through App Switch, where a shopper starts checkout in the browser and seamlessly completes it in the PayPal app using Face ID. This innovation has achieved a remarkable 96% successful login rate with biometrics [3].
Make forms shorter. Even for credit card payments, eliminating unnecessary fields can drive a meaningful uplift in conversions. For example, avoid asking for both shipping and billing addresses when they’re usually the same, or collecting address details that aren’t required for authorization. Removing redundant address fields can reduce data entry by up to 50% [2], making checkout feel fast and easy.
Learn more: eCommerce website optimization
02. Embedded finance
Embedded finance removes friction between selling and managing money by centralizing payments, banking, payouts, fraud protection and reporting into one dashboard that merchants can use to run their business.
For example, in Wix, payments aren’t treated as a separate system; they’re built directly into the business experience. With Wix Checking, managing money also feels like a natural extension of selling, not an extra step.
As Volodymyr Tsukur, co-head of Payments at Wix, explains, “Invisible payments aren’t just about conversion. They’re about confidence. When selling, getting paid and managing cash flow live in the same place, business owners stop reacting to problems and start planning for business growth.”
PayPal’s Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options work the same way. By placing BNPL options more prominently in the checkout process, PayPal meets shoppers’ growing demand for flexible ways to pay. This feature has driven an average order value 80% higher than a standard PayPal transaction [4].
By enabling faster access to funds and more payment options, embedded payment options don’t just improve conversion. They help merchants unlock new ways to serve customers and scale their business.
And the benefits go beyond numbers. Every seamless payment, secure login and reliable payout builds customer trust by reinforcing one simple message: “This business is dependable.” Over time, that trust compounds into loyalty.
Did you know? More than half of consumers (55%) say they won’t shop without their preferred payment method, according to PayPal [5].
PayPal tested this theory out even further by redesigning its Checkout Review Page. The redesigned page now shows all key information (order details, delivery address, and payment options) in one place and lets shoppers switch between BNPL without restarting checkout. As a result, mobile conversion jumped by 105 basis points [3].
The future of low friction commerce
When the work behind the scenes runs smoothly, checkout feels easy on the surface. Customers may not notice all the moving parts, but they can feel it. There’s a sense of stability that comes from having payments, data and business operations all connected instead of scattered.
Low friction commerce isn’t about flashy interfaces. It’s about dependable infrastructure that makes every interaction feel simple and safe.
“The most effective commerce experiences are the ones that do their job without calling attention to themselves.” - Michelle Gill, GM of small business and financial services at PayPal
The future of checkout lies in making it as forgettable as possible for everyone involved, so the product and the business can truly shine.
Related reading:
*Footnotes:
Forrester’s Q1 2025 Online Buyer Journey Survey – DE Consumers.
Wix internal data.
PayPal Internal Data, 2025
Internal Data Analysis of merchants with Pay Later transactions from January – December 2024. Data inclusive of Pay Later transactions across 7 markets (US, UK, AU, DE, ES, IT, FR).
IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by PayPal, “Do Retailers Really Know What Digital Shoppers Want?”, Doc. # US49041822, May 2022. The survey conducted by IDC among 505 large enterprises and 10,054 consumers in five markets: the US, UK, Australia, Germany, and France
