How to Reduce Abandonment and Turn Checkout Into a Growth Engine

Key takeaways

• Slow flows, too many competing options, and preferred payment methods presented too late create friction that contributes to cart abandonment.
• Three connected levers can help address that friction: simplifying checkout, surfacing Pay Later earlier, and using a recognized payment brand.
• A coordinated checkout experience can help merchants capture more value than isolated changes made at a single point in the purchase journey.

Download Supercharge Conversion in 2026, PayPal's guide to turning checkout into a growth lever.

Understanding your checkout abandonment rate

Cart abandonment and checkout abandonment are often used interchangeably, but they describe different points in the buyer journey. Cart abandonment reflects browsing behavior. Checkout abandonment happens deeper in the funnel, often after a customer has already started entering payment or personal information. Tracking checkout abandonment specifically matters because it isolates friction at the step closest to a completed sale.

What's causing checkout abandonment?

Shoppers abandon checkouts for a range of reasons, like unexpected shipping costs, forced account creation, and poor mobile optimization. One of the most common and easily solvable is the payment experience itself. A generic payment stack treats every shopper the same way. Preferred payment methods and pay-over-time options may surface too late in the flow or be introduced too late to affect the purchase decision.

Younger shoppers in particular gravitate toward familiar, wallet-first options like Venmo², and a checkout stack that doesn't offer one misses that expectation. They respond by abandoning the cart, or by spending less than they would have otherwise. Consolidating checkout into a single, well-sequenced flow can address this directly with fewer decisions, less fatigue, and more completed purchases.

How does Pay Later affect average order value?

Flexible installment options let shoppers spread the cost of a larger purchase across multiple payments instead of one. Surfacing PayPal Pay Later³ on the product page before checkout gives it a chance to shape the purchase decision instead of just the payment method.

Does payment brand recognition reduce checkout hesitation?

Shoppers are more likely to complete a purchase when they recognize the payment brand handling it. That recognition comes from PayPal's two-sided network, the base of consumers and merchants built over time.

The trust layer is integral as shopping becomes more assisted and automated. AI agents compress product discovery and education into seconds, increasing the importance of a checkout experience that feels familiar and intuitive.

What does a well-built checkout stack include?

Reducing friction, increasing average order value, and building trust are covered above. Here's the four-part stack that puts them into practice:

What protection does PayPal offer for enterprise transaction volume?

Enterprise merchants need more than a familiar payment button. They need protection that holds up as volume grows. PayPal processed 25.4 billion payment transactions and $1.79 trillion in total payment volume in 2025, across more than 200 markets and 130 currencies.⁸

Buyer and seller protection covers eligible transactions without adding steps to checkout.⁹ Machine learning fraud tools flag risk early and reduce false declines. Automated dispute management¹⁰ and chargeback protection¹¹ when used together cut down the manual work disputes create at scale. Flexible APIs let merchants add payment methods and markets without rebuilding checkout each time. Merchants can grow the payments stack without adding fraud risk or operational overhead.

Where should merchants start?

Start by reviewing checkout performance end-to-end:

1. Review performance across devices, audiences, and markets.
2. Identify where shoppers encounter friction or drop off.
3. Evaluate the right mix of PayPal Checkout, Venmo, Pay Later, and Fastlane capabilities for your integration.
4. Test how payment options are presented across web, mobile, and app.
5. Measure changes in conversion, average order value, and completion rate.
6. Apply successful approaches across priority markets and peak moments, while accounting for fraud and dispute management as part of a broader risk strategy.

For the market forces driving checkout abandonment and PayPal's framework for improving it, explore Supercharge Conversion in 2026, PayPal's guide to turning checkout into a growth engine.