Payments are universally understood – choose your payment method, click to buy, and voilà. The success of an online business is often determined by the user experience it provides to their target audience, and a key driver of that appeal is payments.

NB This is a viewpoint by Thomas Heldorff, VP travel and airlines, global eCommerce at Worldpay.

For online travel providers, understanding how and why consumers prefer to pay for holiday packages in their region is central to sale conversions. Knowing which devices travellers use to complete a holiday booking could guide UX and ensure all relevant channels are optimised for payment conversion.

Booking the trip

We surveyed 12,000 people across six influencing and emerging countries – Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India and US – all of whom booked a holiday or flight online.

We found that travellers in the United States, Australia, Brazil and Germany like to explore holidays on handheld devices (smartphones and tablets), but they’re not yet ready to commit and complete a booking. They prefer to do this using a laptop or desktop computer.

Looking East, travellers are much more open to completing a purchase via mobile. China, the largest ecommerce market in the world, has 32% of travellers booking trips on smartphones, while the rapidly growing market of India sees 17%.

It’s not just smartphones travel firms need to consider. Thinking ahead, it is worth noting that our survey found travellers across Asia are interested in booking travel using virtual reality devices –  17% of Indians in contrast to just 3% in the US.

Optimising the payment experience for smart devices

Our survey highlighted another factor to consider if you want to tap into China’s  $100 billion digital travel market. China has a dominant e-wallet provider with Alipay accounting for 44% of global e-wallet spend. Just as contactless payments in the UK, and other parts of Europe, has become a ‘lifestyle’ choice, mobile payments in China are being adopted as the most convenient way to transact.

Findings from Worldpay’s Global Payments Report predicts that Alipay will dominate 60% of total e-wallet spend by 2020.

Travel businesses have to embrace Alipay and the other alternative payment methods popular in China.

Meanwhile, the Western payment landscape is diverse, with a vast variety of alternative payment methods. However, the survey suggests that travellers are adopting them at a slower rate.

 While on vacation

Alipay is obviously popular within China, but Chinese travellers have told us that they’d also like to use Alipay while they’re abroad. Rather than exchanging money into local currency, 30% would like to use it for taxis abroad and 17% want to use them to pay for attraction tickets.

Travellers from Germany often look for the option to pay via Paypal, which also the only alternative payment method that US tourists are open to use, behind cards and cash.

The question is – are you offering the right payment methods for your inbound customers?

Download our free report, to find out how your customer wants to pay and why, and talk to us to find out how to embed alternative payment methods into your booking flow and further optimise the experience for smart devices

NB This is a viewpoint by Thomas Heldorff, VP travel and airlines, global eCommerce at Worldpay. It appears here as part of Tnooz’s sponsored content initiative.