If you are a D2C business looking to reduce cart abandonment, and improve online conversions, you are in the right place. Checkout abandonment is one of the most common ecommerce checkout issues businesses face today. This blog talks about checkout abandonment, top reasons, and how airpay helps D2C brands create a smooth checkout experience, reduce cart abandonment and turn more shoppers into customers.

A customer spends 20 minutes browsing on your online store, read reviews, compares and selects the products they wish to buy. They add everything to the cart, proceeds to checkout, and then…leave, without purchasing.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This lost sale is known as checkout (or cart) abandonment. According to the Baymard Institute, the average online checkout abandonment rate is 70.22% worldwide in 2025.

What many business owners don’t realise is that checkout abandonment is not just a conversion issue, it is one of the largest hidden revenue leaks in ecommerce. Let’s deep dive to understand more about it.

What is Checkout Abandonment and Why does it Matter?

Cart abandonment is when a customer adds items to their online shopping cart, initiates the payment process, but leaves without buying anything. But the question is, despite having the intent to buy, why do customers leave at checkout? Customers may drop off due to several reasons, including:

• Limited payment options
• Complex checkout flows
• Unexpected costs
• Slow checkout pages
• Mandatory account creation
• Security concerns

Cart Abandonment V/S Checkout Abandonment

While both the terms may sound similar, there is a small difference between them. Cart abandonment is when a customer adds items to their carts while browsing but leave before initiating the payment process. Checkout abandonment, on the other hand, occurs when a customer initiates checkout but leaves before completing the payment.

How big is the Cost of Checkout Abandonment?

For every ecommerce business generating a revenue of ₹9 crore+ per year, checkout abandonment can result in losing up to ₹20.7 crore in lost sales opportunities per year. (Source: Baymard Institute; currency conversion applied). Beyond revenue loss, checkout abandonment also leads to higher customer acquisition cost, poor customer trust and lower repeat usage.

Did you know?

Source: Baymard Institute
(Currency conversions applied; figures based on global ecommerce benchmarks and usability studies.)

Top 3 Reasons for Cart Abandonment

Following are the primary reasons why customers abandon carts while shopping online from an ecommerce business.

Reason#1: Limited Payment Options

Consider a fashion who doesn’t support any alternative payment methods, other UPI. When a customer who prefers paying by amazonPay reaches checkout and doesn’t find their preferred option, they are likely to drop off their carts and shop elsewhere.

One missing option can lead to an instant drop off.

In today’s fast-evolving financial landscape, customers expect flexibility in how they pay. Research shows that about 42% of shoppers abandon their carts if their preferred payment method is not available at checkout.

Based on age, geography, device, and transaction value, different customers prefer different payment methods. While most mobile shoppers prefer UPI or wallet options, customers making high-value payments might prefer EMI or BNPL options. Therefore, it is crucial to offer multiple payment options during checkout to reduce checkout abandonment.

How airpay solves this?

Our payment gateway for small businesses provides multiple payment options like UPI, cards, wallets, net banking, PayPal, EMI etc, offering flexibility to your customers to pay their way. By reducing payment friction, airpay helps them complete the transactions and reduce cart abandonment.

Reason #2: Slow Checkout

Today, payment processing speed can either make or break a sale for ecommerce businesses

Slow checkout happens due to:

• Low page loading speed
• OTP delays
• Laggy redirects to payment pages
• Heavy plugins
• Slow hosting

When checkout is slow, customers lose their confidence and are more likely to abandon their carts. In contrast, a fast checkout builds customer trust and encourages them to complete their purchase.

With most checkout abandonments happening on mobile devices, speed becomes non-negotiable for shoppers. If checkout takes too long, they are likely to drop off and shop elsewhere.

How airpay addresses this problem?

airpay optimises both payment processing speed and checkout flow, helping ecommerce businesses convert faster. Businesses benefit from our fast checkout payment solution:

• Fast payment processing for hassle-free checkouts
• A unified checkout experience
• Smooth checkout flows optimised for mobile-first commerce
• Smart routing for higher success rates
• Reduced checkout complexity across payment methods
• Reliable performance at scale, despite traffic surges

This maximises checkout speed, minimises failures, and improves checkout conversion rates.

Reason #3: OTP-Based Pre-Fill of Customer Data

Long checkout forms frustrate customers the most, especially on mobile. When they are asked to manually enter details like name, mobile number, email ID, and address over and again, they are likely to drop off.

In a fast-paced digital environment, customers expect their checkouts to be instant, effortless and hassle-free. If they find it tedious, they are most likely to abandon the carts and shop from a competitor who offers them a smoother experience.

How airpay solves it?

airpay's dashcheckout uses OTP-based verification to automatically pre-fill customer details. This reduces manual inputs and speeds up the checkout process, improving conversion rates.

With Dashcheckout, we help businesses:

• Recover revenue lost sales
• Build customer trust
• Increase customer lifetime value
• Reduce cart abandonments
• Lower customer acquisition costs
• 'From filling address to delivery' all in one click

Enter DashCheckout: airpay's Solution to Checkout Abandonment

Understanding these pain points of merchants, airpay developed Dashcheckout, a fast checkout payment solution designed to handle common checkout drop off causes. With some useful features like the One-Click Checkout, Smart Payment Routing, Comprehensive Analytics, and Advanced Security, it combines speed, reliability, and flexibility.

Benefits of Dashcheckout:

• Multiple payment options: Customers get more payment choices including cards, UPI, wallets, bank transfers, BNPL, etc in one integration to eliminate online payment problems.
• Lightning-fast processing speeds: Returning customers get one-click payments intelligent routing for the fastest gateway selection.
• Minimizing Failed Transactions: With automatic retry and real-time transaction monitoring, we help businesses improve checkout conversion rates.

Do you want to reduce cart abandonment and improve online conversion rates? Signup with airpay today!