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E-commerce checkout has become better and faster for consumers, thanks to merchant features like auto-fill forms and new payment options. But customer expectations are higher than ever.
There’s a disconnect between merchant and customer perceptions of checkout experiences. An April 2025 Forrester study commissioned by PayPal included e-commerce decision makers and consumers in North America and Europe. Over one-third of customers surveyed reported difficulties with basic tasks like entering shipping and payment information.1 But only about 10% of merchants recognized these challenges.2
Accelerated checkout is one path to improving checkout experience. These solutions allow customers to auto-fill payment and shipping information to complete a purchase. Checkout features that reduce friction can help enhance customer satisfaction, boost repeat purchases, and drive revenue growth.
Customers are hyper-focused on the checkout process over other e-commerce experiences. This makes sense because checkout is often where a customer’s progress gets bogged down.
In the survey, 73% of respondents considered a streamlined checkout process, with as few steps as possible, important or extremely important.3 They also said ease of experience remains their top priority when shopping online.4 This outweighed factors like personalization or product recommendations, and highlights the need for low-friction buyer journeys.
73% of respondents said a checkout experience with minimal steps is important or extremely important5
This consumer-retailer perception gap starts with creating a new account. While 38% of consumers found this step challenging, only 12% of e-commerce decision makers did.6 Likewise, 39% of consumers thought entering shipping information was challenging, while only 11% of e-commerce respondents did.7
42% of surveyed merchants said accelerated checkout would positively influence the customer experience8
When sluggish checkout slows down a purchase, customers can be quick to go elsewhere. Of consumers surveyed:
And checkout is a make-or-break moment for consumers.
Asked to rank the checkout features that were most important to them, consumer respondents chose auto-filling personal information, followed by auto-filling shipping information.
In the survey, brands and consumers are aligned on one thing: checkout must be improved.
Merchant respondents widely recognize that quick, seamless checkout is important for driving revenue and building brand loyalty. Consumers want accelerated checkout, and believe creating accounts and typing in address and payment information gets in their way. To keep up with customer expectations, merchants should offer fast, easy-to-use guest checkout.
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