Cracking the Code to Europe’s Payment Jungle

Expanding your ecommerce business into Europe? Great! But let’s be clear: Europe isn’t one big happy market where everyone swipes the same card and skips off to checkout blissfully. Nope. Europe’s payment preferences are as varied as its languages. While UK shoppers cling to their card, Germany will avoid sharing bank details and throw PayPal into the mix. Meanwhile, the Dutch are over there with iDEAL, doing their own thing. 

The message is loud and clear: if you want to thrive in Europe, your payment game needs to be localised, secure, and smarter than your competition. The good news? By adopting these trends, you’ll be poised to dominate Europe’s ecommerce scene in 2025 and beyond. The bad news? If you ignore them, you’ll be left watching as your customers abandon carts faster than you can say “conversion rate”.

Europe isn’t one size fits all. Customers want their familiar payment methods – or they’ll bounce. Offering local payment options isn’t optional; it’s survival. Fail here, and those growth plans? Gone. 

• The Netherlands loves iDEAL – with 70%+ of transactions 
• Germany swears by PayPal – with 75%+ of payments 
• Meanwhile, the Nordics are out there leading the charge in mobile payments 

Facetheory, a UK-based skincare brand, nailed it by integrating iDEAL for Dutch customers and Sofort for German ones. Result? Reduced cart abandonment and higher trust levels. 

Translation: more happy customers, more revenue. 

Pro Tip: Localised payments = your ticket to a wider audience, better trust, and increased sales.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is still the cool kid on the ecommerce block, and by 2025, it’ll be unavoidable. Younger shoppers (hello, Gen Z and Millennials) are all in on flexible payments, and it’s not hard to see why. 

Pro Tip: Offering BNPL can boost your average order value (AOV) by up to 45%. 

Why? People love spending money they don’t have (only a joke – it’s the interest-free payments they love). 

By offering Klarna’s BNPL, Gymshark saw a 33% jump in AOV in Germany and Sweden. Dermalogica followed suit, doubling their AOV in France – from €100 to €220. That’s what we call winning.

Open banking is here to revolutionise payments. Faster, more secure, and cheaper than traditional methods, it lets customers pay directly from their bank accounts. That’s right – no card networks, no fuss. 

Expect open banking payments to grow by 40% annually through 2025. Solutions like Trustly and Tink are already paving the way for lower transaction fees and improved security. 

Proof it works: 

Rituals, a luxury brand, adopted Trustly and cut payment processing fees by 20%. Bonus? Customers loved the simplicity and speed, so they kept coming back.

Mobile commerce is booming, and digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal are leading the charge. In 2023, digital wallets accounted for 44% of all ecommerce transactions in Europe, and the trend is only growing. 

For UK merchants, integrating digital wallets is a no-brainer. They’re fast, secure, and what mobile-first customers want. 

Smart Home Sounds’ Playbook:

By adding Apple Pay and PayPal, they saw a 41.9% YoY conversion rate boost and 27% of card transactions coming via Apple Pay. The lesson? Make it easy for customers to pay, and they’ll reward you. 

To put it simply, if your customers think your checkout isn’t secure, they’re out. Nearly half (47%) of UK shoppers will abandon a purchase if they sense any payment sketchiness. 

Here’s what to do: 

• Get SCA-compliant (thanks, PSD2) 
• Share your security badges and SSL encryptions 
• Use fraud detection tools

Check this example: 

Willemse, a French garden centre, implemented SCA-compliant payment solutions and fraud detection. The result? A 10% increase in payment conversions and fewer fraud-related headaches. 

Europe’s ecommerce market will be more competitive than ever. But with the right payment strategies, you’ll be a merchant who customers not only trust but actively seek out. 

Want more insights like these? Download the full guide in the State of Ecommerce report and discover more strategies to stay ahead of the competition.