Unified commerce: good for customers, great for business

The first step is to look at the wider picture and get a good idea of what your customers expect. Let’s look at the retail industry as an example.

Sophie, our shopper, is based in the UK. She’s a big fan of a U.S. brand and browses their products online regularly. Though the brand has a physical store in the U.K., she prefers to order and pay for products online and have them delivered to her house.

These are not unrealistic expectations for shoppers anymore. But for businesses, that’s a lot of systems that need to work together quickly, accurately, and effectively. Making this happen doesn’t have to be a headache.

Unified commerce can bring all this—and more—together seamlessly for your customers and your business.

Let’s go back to Sophie’s shopping experience and a moment where the whole thing could either fall apart or deliver pure joy: payment.

Sophie is browsing a U.S. business from the U.K. The company’s website needs to be able to accommodate purchases and deliveries from across the globe. And they need to be able to accept and process a global array of payment methods—securely.

With a flexible unified commerce solution, like the one from Visa Acceptance Solutions, you can plug into the right acquirers and processors across the world to serve your customers where they are.

So Sophie can pay for the product on the brand’s website using her U.K. credit card and, a few days later, she’s delighted to have her purchase delivered to her house.

With unified commerce, businesses get a seamless experience, too. Thanks to our modular platform, every component is designed to work together smoothly, and you can add more components when you need them. 

Start by enabling your customers to pay how they want, most wherever they are in the world. Then power up your payments offering by gathering insights into customer behaviour or enabling buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS).

So what would it take to deliver a unified commerce experience like Sophie’s?

Let’s break it down:

• Unified Checkout Integration enables payments to be accepted and processed consistently and securely. 
• Global Gateway provides access to 250+ acquirers and processors in 160+ countries and territories¹ so you can accept popular local payment methods anywhere in the world.
• Decision Manager helps reduce fraud and helps optimize your revenue.
• Token Management Service securely stores and tokenize customers’ data so shopping experiences are seamless and tailored. It also helps you gather insights into buying behaviour that can be used to build brand loyalty through offers and rewards. 
• Account Updater keeps customers’ stored payment information up to date to help improve authorization rates. 
   

And if this all sounds like a shopping list, that’s because it is. Our flexible platform allows you to choose what you need when and how you need it. And it all slots into place effortlessly. 

Unified commerce uses payment as the key moment to deliver an experience that’s complete and convenient for customers and concise and flexible for businesses. 

Find how our unified commerce solution can help you prioritize convenience.