The UK Competition and Markets Authority wants to open up Apple and Google’s app stores to rival payment methods. Reuters reports that the regulator’s proposals would give developers and retailers the right to steer customers towards payment options outside the two dominant ecosystems.
That single change tells retailers something bigger: the closed, card-first checkout is losing its grip.
Card payments alone no longer meet customer expectations. Shoppers pay across apps, social channels, marketplaces and stores, and they expect the same speed everywhere.
Beyond the Card: The Payment Methods Retailers Need Now
Four methods are reshaping retail checkouts.
Account-to-account payments move money directly between bank accounts. No card scheme sits in the middle, so retailers cut interchange and scheme fees on every sale. In markets with strong open banking rails, A2A is already a mainstream option.
Digital wallets carry the volume. Industry studies put wallets on course to drive close to half of all global transaction value. Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and regional wallet apps now sit at the front of most checkout flows, and the CMA proposals open the door to more of them.
Buy Now Pay Later lifts conversion and average order value. Splitting a purchase into instalments brings higher-priced items within reach. Analysis from Host Merchant Services puts the global BNPL market at around $560 billion in 2025, heading towards roughly $912 billion by 2030.
Real-time rails settle funds in seconds. FedNow and The Clearing House’s RTP network in the US, and instant schemes across Europe, remove the multi-day wait between a sale and cleared cash.
Fees, Friction and Abandoned Baskets
Every card transaction carries a fee. On a single sale it looks small. Across millions of orders, it becomes one of the largest lines in a retail P&L.
A2A and wallet payments reduce the cost of each sale. Money moves along cheaper rails, and the savings drop straight to the margin. For high-volume, low-margin categories, that difference decides whether a channel works.
Payments Are a Customer Experience Decision
Payment architecture used to be a procurement question. It is now a design question.
Connect payments, refunds, loyalty and customer data in one architecture. When these sit in separate systems, customers feel the gaps. Loyalty points fail to apply. A return processed in store cannot be refunded to the original online payment method. Support teams work blind.
Slow refunds damage trust as much as a slow checkout. A customer who waits ten days for money back remembers that longer than they remember the purchase.
Instant rails make same-day refunds possible, and retailers who use them turn a negative moment into a reason to shop again.
What Retailers Should Do Next
Start with the data you already hold.
Look at abandonment rates by market and device. Look at total payment cost as a percentage of revenue. Look at average refund time. Those three numbers show where the current setup costs you customers and margin.
Then treat the checkout as a product, not a plugin. Give it an owner, a roadmap and a measure of success tied to conversion and cost per transaction.
Retailers who modernise their payment ecosystem now will be ready for what comes next. Those who wait will rebuild under pressure, while their customers pay somewhere else.
