eCommerce in 2026: How Checkout & Payment Behavior Is Changing

November 9, 2025

In 2025, eCommerce is still growing more and faster than ever before. eCommerce today looks completely different from what is used to be. Customers have become smarter, their expectations are higher, not just about the product itself, but about the entire shopping experience. They want speed, simplicity, and trust at checkout.

The checkout stage can truly make or break a sale. Most businesses still lose potential revenue due to complicated checkout processes, missing preferred payment methods, or even because the checkout isn’t mobile-friendly.

That’s why understanding customer purchasing behavior has become one of the most important skills for every store owner.

In this article, we will explore how eCommerce has evolved today, the key the checkout and payment trends shaping eCommerce in 2025, and how you can adopt to stay ahead.

Let’s get started!

Global eCommerce Market In 2025

According to recent forecasts, worldwide online sales are expected to reach approximately $6.42 trillion by the end of this year, while another source predicted it could go as high as $7.39 trillion.

On the level of WooCommerce platform, which plays a key role in the eCommerce sector, it occupies around 20.1% of eCommerce websites worldwide. Taking into account other studies that suggested it could reach 33-38%.

This indicates that the global eCommerce market is still expanding rapidly. According to Precedence research, the eCommerce market size is projected to reach nearly $75 trillion by 2034.

This significant growth is due to many factors, such as increased internet access, the ease of mobile shopping, and the growing diversity of payment options.

The continues expansion and growth in eCommerce also means strong competition among store owners, because customers now expect the best from everything. They anticipate an easy, fast, and hassle-free checkout experience, access to all the payment methods they want and prefer.

So, if you don’t pay attention to customizing checkout and payment convenience, customers will easily go to another store.

Overall, eCommerce has entered a new era of creativity, opportunities, development, and challenges.

Mobile vs Desktop Checkout Behavior

Many of us browse and search for products via mobile, but when it comes to checkout, we often complete the purchase process on a desktop, right?

Recent studies and statistics have clarified this picture for us, saying: while mobile devices dominate the traffic, actual checkout happens more on the desktop.

Statistics show that mobile traffic accounts for around 75% of visits in retail eCommerce, while desktop makes up the remaining 25%.

But visits alone are not enough, the conversion rate on desktop is 4.8%, while the corresponding rate on mobile is 2.9%.

This tells us that customers are browsing and comparing products on their phones, but when it comes to making an actual purchase, the preference still goes to the desktop. This is due to several reasons, such as:

The difficulty of filling in information on the phone
Small screen
Popups that hinder the purchase process
The difficulty to open another window at the same time
Many customers believe purchasing via desktop is safer than using mobile

So, as a store owner, ignoring mobile is not an option, but also don’t neglect the desktop, you must optimize both, and make the mobile checkout as friction-free as possible, because mobile comprises a huge share of visitors, so raising the mobile conversion can yield big gains in revenue.

But how?

One clicks or express checkout
Mobile friendly layout
Autofill, address validation, fewer distractions
Guest checkout option
Clear payment options and trust signals

And if you are using WooCommerce, there are some plugins that help you optimize your checkout:

WooCommerce Additional Checkout Fields Customizer: This plugin allows you customize your checkout as you want, you can add, style and control field visibility to create a smooth, personalized, and use friendly checkout experience.

Preferred Payment Methods Around the World

Localized and Diverse Payment Options

Payment preferences have become a key factor shaping online shopping behavior, acting as a critical point for both, customer and store owner. If shoppers don’t find their preferred payment method, they will not complete the purchase, leading directly to lost sales opportunities for the store.

Therefore, providing customers their preferred payment methods is no longer optional, it has become essential to offer diverse, localized, and convenient payment options to improve checkout conversion and customer satisfaction.

With the advancements of technology, as a store owner, you can control which payment methods appear for different customers to ensure that every customer sees the most relevant and convenient payment options. So now, you can display payment methods based on the country and the product purchased, or according to the currency used for the purchase, or even based anything you want.

Digital Wallets are Dominating Globally

Preferred payment methods vary from country to country, but globally, one trend is clear: digital wallets are rapidly becoming the dominant payment method worldwide.

According to BlueSnap, digital and mobile wallets are projected to account for 54% of global eCommerce transactions by 2026. Followed by credit cards 16% and debit cards 10%.

In Europe and North America, cards are still the preferred method, based on statistics, in Europe around 68% of transactions are made via credit or debit cards, and in North America, the figure is about 53%.
In Asia, mobile wallets dominate by 70% of online transactions.
In the Middle East and Africa, cash on delivery remains common, though mobile wallet adoption is accelerating.

The Rise of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL)

Another trend that has spread globally recently, is Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) especially among Gen Z and Millennials. This payment method allows customers to buy now and pay later in multiple installments without any interest encouraging customers to make more and more purchases.

Based on recent studies, the (BNPL) market is projected to exceed $560 billion by 2025.
Also, a study by Juniper Research predicted that the number of BNPL users worldwide will exceed 900 million by 2027.

Biometric Payments for a Seamless Checkout Experience

Recently, biometric payments have gained significant attention for facilitating the checkout process. This method involves payment through fingerprint, facial recognition, or voice authentication, allowing users to complete the checkout process in seconds without entering a password or credit card number.

This not only enhances convenience and flexibility, but also builds trust, increases conversion rate, and reduces friction.

Blockchain and Decentralized eCommerce in 2025

Customers always gravitate towards safer and more reliable transactions, which is what digital currencies represent. According to CoinLaw, “In the cryptocurrency payment gateway sector, the number of store owners accepting crypto has grown by around 38%, surpassing 32,000 online”.

This trend is expected to continue rising in the coming years. Moreover, integrating cryptocurrency with traditional payment gateways opens the door to a new global audience of customers who prefer using digital currencies for their purchase.

Why Customers Abandon Checkout

According to recent studies, the global average cart abandonment rate is around 70% to 75%, making it one of the biggest challenges for eCommerce stores. This is due to several factors, such as:

Unexpected costs like shipping fees and taxes.
Slow or complicated checkout process.
The lack of diverse payments options.

So now, how can we reduce abandoned carts and increase conversion rate?

Offer diverse payment options: Sometimes the customer doesn’t complete the purchase process and abandons their cart because their preferred payment method isn’t available.

Therefore, always make sure to provide all local and international payment methods to ensure a smooth checkout experience and avoid losing potential revenue.

Offer one-page checkout: In our current era, customers seek speed and simplicity when shopping online. They don’t want to go through multiple pages or complicated steps just to complete a purchase.

The more complex it becomes, the higher cart abandonment rates. So, always ensure your store offers simple, easy, and one-page checkout with minimal steps.

Display total cost upfront: Sometimes, the customer is surprised by hidden costs, which leads to halting the purchase process. Therefore, make sure to display all the costs that are related to the purchase before reaching the checkout page.

The Future of Checkout Experience

In the current and future era of eCommerce world, with the advancement of technology, and AI-driven personalization customer expectations have become higher than ever. Today’s customers expect not only easy and smooth checkout experience but also tailored to their preferences, with fewer clicks, faster payment methods, and options that match their lifestyle.

The recants statistics show us that “84% of global shoppers say that one click checkout is an important factor in choosing where to shop“, so customers will not choose the store retailer just because it offers them the product they want, but the choice will be based on how easy and personalized the checkout experience is.

So, in the future customers expect that the checkout process will complete in seconds with just one click payments and passwordless checkout instead of going through multiple steps.

Also, one case study found that sites using one-page checkout, and wallet payments like (PayPal, Apple Pay) achieved 58.9% conversions vs 52.9% without.

In the world of WordPress and WooCommerce this will not be a difficult task, by using the right plugins, they can easily merge payment gateways and leverage AI AI-based personalization system to deliver a checkout experience that matches customer expectations.

This also can be a great opportunity for plugin developers to start developing innovative solutions that meet customer requirements.

Conclusion

As we saw in the article, all these insights highlight one key fact: the checkout and payment experience are no longer just technical steps or small parts of the customer purchase journey, they are strategic touchpoints that define customer satisfaction.

Therefore, store owners’ adaptation to these behavioral shifts is not optional, but mandatory for success, and success will come from focusing on AI-personalizing, BNPL payment methods, and a checkout experience that emphasizes speed, trust, and simplicity.