UK bank Lloyds has been promoting its Lloyds Bank Merchant Services acceptance service for UK retailers ahead of what is set to be a busy shopping period with Black Friday.
Lloyd’s is encouraging retail merchants to integrate its Bank Merchant Services to ensure their payment platforms are prepared for the surge in payments volumes that comes with the increase in shopping amongst consumers during this time period.
The service offers customer authentication (SCA), two-factor authentication and PCI DSS data encryption that whilst may create friction within the payment checkout journey, provides essential security.
Enabling shoppers to pay through a variety of cards, digital wallets and alternative payment methods, ensuring that checkouts and platforms aren’t disrupted by downtime, will be essential for retailers to reap the full rewards of Black Friday sales.
Melinda Roylett, Managing Director of Merchant Services at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “Retail merchants can take advantage of POS and payment platforms that integrate powerful data analytics, payments acceptance optimisation, and secure payment processing with 99.999% platform uptime, to ensure they can give consumers a smooth, quick and protected checkout.
“Other services like chargeback management, fraud monitoring and T+1 settlement are also available, enabling retailers to convert more transactions at lower cost, and gain more cashflow visibility and reduce chargeback rates.”
Lloyds Bank Merchant Services handles card payments for 34,000 in the UK, analysing transaction trends and transaction data via Lloyds Bank Market Intelligence (LBMI). These vast datasets represent the largest pool of transaction data in the UK, enabling Lloyds and its retailers insights.
LBMI analyses aggregated and anonymised data from Lloyds Banking Group’s 26 million retail customers in the UK to help business leaders understand their customers, competitors and market.
The platform also analyses consumer behaviour impacting the retail sector, with its teams working with retailers to provide actionable insights to help them plan ahead for busy shopping periods such as Black Friday and Christmas.
These analytical insights are key when last year’s Black Friday sales jumped by 7.35 from 2022 figures to £13.3bn spent in record sales.
LBMI tracked Black Friday sales last year from multiple retail sectors, channels and demographics. It found that Millenial spent the most in retail sectors with £83.8m spent, followed by Gen X with £71.5m.
“When margins are tight and customers are looking for the best bargains, merchants can provide a great customer experience with targeted offers, generating more sales and bolstering revenues,” added Roylett.
“Retailers should use a payments platform with consistent uptime and a wide range of payment methods, which is secure, reliable and flexible enough to handle the volume spikes during peak sales periods like Black Friday. With the right tools, tech, and hand-in-hand support, retailers will not just survive Cyber Weekend, but also have the data that will help them thrive well into the future.”