Retailers spend heavily to bring customers to the checkout page. Advertising attracts them, merchandising teams put the right products in front of them, and digital teams refine websites, navigation and product discovery to make purchasing easier.
Even after all that work, oftentimes the sale can still disappear at the final step.
Baymard Institute research puts the average online shopping cart abandonment rate globally at approximately 70 per cent (Baymard Institute, 2025). Among the reasons consumers give for leaving are unexpected costs, forced account creation, concerns about payment security and checkout processes that are too long or complicated.
“Getting shoppers to checkout is only half the battle,” says Kris Zanuldin, Head of Konek at Interac Corp.. “If the experience feels complicated, unfamiliar or untrustworthy, even heavily motivated customers won’t hesitate to abandon their purchase.”
The cost adds up quickly. New Interac research[i] among 400 business decision-makers in Canada found the typical business loses roughly five sales and $1,000 in online revenue every month to payment or checkout friction. This figure climbs to $21,000 per month among the merchants hit hardest.
For retailers, those abandoned carts represent advertising dollars already spent, products successfully merchandised and customers who had already shown clear intent to buy. The opportunity lies in making it easier for customers already at checkout to complete the purchases they intended to make.
Friction Builds Quietly at the Final Step
Many of the steps retailers add to checkout have legitimate business purposes.
Account creation can support loyalty programs and personalization. Additional forms can provide useful customer information. Verification processes can help manage risk, while expanded payment options can give shoppers greater flexibility.
Individually, each step may be reasonable. Together, they can create a checkout experience that asks too much of the customer at the moment the retailer wants the transaction to feel easiest. Each extra action creates another opportunity to leave.
Checkout therefore has to support security, customer relationships and payment choice without becoming burdensome.
Options Do Not Always Mean Convenience
Retailers have responded to changing customer expectations by adding more ways to pay. The number of options available at checkout, however, does not necessarily determine whether the experience feels easier and more convenient.
“Retailers often assume more payment options automatically mean more convenience,” says Zanuldin. “In reality, shoppers aren’t looking for endless choice. They want a payment experience that feels familiar, secure and seamless. They want to pay with confidence.”
That confidence matters as consumers pay closer attention to how businesses handle personal data and financial information.
Research from KPMG found that nearly half of Canadians surveyed were uncomfortable with retailers sharing data about their shopping habits. More than nine in 10 also expressed retailers weren’t doing enough to protect their personal and financial information from cyber criminals (KPMG, 2025).
Checkout is often the point where those concerns become most immediate. Customers may be asked to provide payment credentials, personal details, account information and consent to data practices within a short period of time.
Established retailers may benefit from years of customer familiarity. Newer brands, or retailers serving first-time customers, may have only a brief opportunity to establish enough confidence for the shopper to proceed.
Making Checkout More Familiar with Konek
This is the problem Konek is built to solve. The digital wallet is designed to help Canadian merchants simplify the payment experience while promoting consumer choice.
Powered by Interac and backed by Canada’s leading banks, Konek provides an online checkout experience that draws on banking relationships Canadians already know and trust.
Customers can use payment methods connected to participating financial institutions, including direct payments from their chequing or savings account or with accepted credit cards. When using Konek to pay online at participating merchants, customers select Konek at checkout, choose their payment type (depending on merchant acceptance) and pay. Once set up, their payment information is saved, making future purchases even faster and more convenient.
Konek keeps customer data safe by using the bank’s secure authentication and payment consent protocols. As a result, Konek does not store any customer banking information through tokenization. Only necessary data to complete a purchase transaction is shared with retailers.For retailers, the goal is to make payment feel more familiar while preserving flexibility and security for the customer. The broader opportunity is to reduce friction and uncertainty at a stage of the customer journey where both can contribute to abandonment.
A convenient checkout experience does not need to overwhelm shoppers with choice. It needs to help them understand what is happening, trust the payment method they are using and complete the purchase without unnecessary work.
Converting Customers Retailers Have Already Won
Evolving the checkout experience to meet consumer demands can help retailers capture more value from customers they have already persuaded to buy.
Reducing unnecessary friction does not mean sacrificing security or payment choice. It means examining whether each element of checkout is helping the customer complete the transaction or making that transaction harder than it needs to be.
As consumer expectations continue to evolve, the final steps leading to payment deserve the same attention retailers give to acquisition and merchandising.
The most expensive abandoned cart is not the one that never started. It is the one that was almost finished.
Canadian merchants can visit Konek.ca to learn more about integrating Konek into their online checkout experience.
[i] 1 Interac research conducted online by Phase 5 among 400 Canadian businesses (1 to 499 employees) between July 17 and July 31, 2026. Respondents are business decision-makers and were responsible for selecting their organization’s payment solutions. All businesses in the sample currently sell online (or plan to within the next year) and primarily serve customers in Canada.
