Currently, having commercial activity online and offline implies having contact with the usual forms of payment. In addition to having traditional payment methods, businesses cannot miss other formulas that are currently positioned as the favorites after the radical transformation of the market in the last three years and especially due to the changes in the consumption habits of citizens.

Marketplaces or platforms manage to offer a series of benefits to this paradigm shift. For brands, they are a way to reduce the costs of acquiring new customers, to find new buyers and to facilitate their operations. For customers, marketplaces or platforms represent a reliable and neutral platform where they can find everything they need in one place.

Marketplaces and similar platforms are of great importance and have competitive advantages when it comes to offering maximum facilities for the integration of new companies in sales platforms. When we talk about a marketplace, it is ideal to think of a digital showcase, in a large shopping center where various brands offer their products or services. Depending on their nature, we can talk about two types of marketplaces. Firstly, as platforms that allow the sale of third-party products or services, providing buyers and sellers with a safe environment, with a unique and verified buying and selling experience. These platforms are responsible for the maintenance, expansion, offer of new payment methods, for sellers and buyers, such as eBay, Vinted or Etsy.

But we are also talking about companies that traditionally sold their products or services and that have evolved to allow third parties to sell their products through their page, with a double purpose: that the company that acts as a marketplace can open new lines of products or services without the need to buy and distribute them, and that the seller of these products has access to a greater capillarity of potential buyers thanks to being protected by a major brand. Examples of this type of marketplace would be Tiendanimal or Mango.

According to the Adyen Report on Payment Methods 2022, more than 67% of Spaniards make their purchases through stores such as Amazon, eBay or Etsy, while 35% of companies in our country consider it especially shocking that these marketplaces deploy their physical stores. These data reveal how these types of companies are capable of completely transforming society, business strategy and the market as we understand it.

Marketplaces are the economic backbone in more and more sectors. When consumers access a marketplace or platform, they use it to connect directly with companies with whom they want to make a purchase. Marketplaces are the first choice for many buyers looking for security when buying or booking a product or service. But also, when companies are looking for unique experiences when selling their products and services, marketplaces are the immediate answer as they even help companies to exponentially increase their ability to reach a larger audience and take advantage of all the transformative capacity of your technology.

This trend has experienced exponential growth following the changes caused by COVID-19 in recent years. In addition to the behavior of the global market, the main engine that has caused this transformation is the great advantages that these can bring to companies, such as generating traffic on their website, increasing brand awareness, supporting online sales or obtaining growth in their sales. sales. However, to carry out a competitive activity within this sector, it is necessary to know in detail all the options, such as what payment methods it is important to offer or how to correctly position the products before potential customers.

Faced with this new panorama of consumption in Spain, according to the Adyen Report on Payment Methods 2022, 73% of consumers decide to make their purchases in local stores, while more than 63% choose to do so through online stores and 68% in marketplaces. The evolution of the market is also reflected in the concern of companies, since the most outstanding challenge in 2022 continues to be digital transformation for 5 out of 10 respondents.

For consumers it has never been so easy to make a purchase, since every day the number of ways and places where they are made increases. Nowadays, we can talk about buying online, in person or through a chatbot and, as new ways of buying emerge, different forms of payment are also born. Sometimes, companies that offer their services through marketplaces may have problems offering flexible, secure and fast payment channels to their customers. In fact, one of the main reasons why users abandon the shopping cart in online stores in our country is because they cannot find their favorite payment method. The solution, therefore, lies in the implementation of payment gateways adjusted to the needs of the business and those of the clients to expand the offer of the payment methods most used by consumers anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, the emergence of new payment methods in the market that buyers use on a daily basis is not unrelated to marketplaces, so offering options such as deferred payments or wallets as payment options is key to attracting more sellers who want to sell their products against other competing marketplaces. In today's market, it is important to integrate all contact channels into a single platform, offering a unique and consistent experience in each business.

This omnichannel approach has reached ecommerce to increase the flexibility that customers need, reduce barriers to product sales, shopping cart abandonment, increase the conversion rate and reduce the risk of fraud in returns. Although each company's specific payment context is unique, one thing remains the same: payments are always a strategic driver of value and growth. In this way, linking business objectives to payments allows them to be achieved more quickly and with greater control.