TodayPay Refund Study Shows Nearly All Consumers Want Choice

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Jan 16, 2024, 09:00 ET

Comprehensive "Where Is My Refund" Consumer Study and White Paper Released

NEW YORK, Jan. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- TodayPay Inc., a technology company pioneering a new category in payments called Refunds as a Service™ announced today at the National Retail Federation Big Show (NRF 2024) the unveiling of the much anticipated research study and white paper titled, "Where Is My Refund? Understanding When, Where & How Consumers Want Their Money Back."

TodayPay, in consultation with The Refunds Blog™, commissioned the comprehensive refund research study to further highlight consumer preferences and behaviors regarding refunds. The study surveyed nearly 800 U.S consumers that have made an e-commerce purchase and subsequently returned the item for a refund in the 90 days leading up to the study.

"There's over a trillion dollars of value exchanged every year in the form of refunds, yet there's been almost zero innovation improving the refund customer experience," said Jeremy Balkin, Founder and CEO, TodayPay Inc. and former Head of Fintech for J.P. Morgan. "Traditional refunds are monolithic, inflexible, and uncertain. TodayPay is transforming the broken refund process, from where money goes to die, into an intelligent customer acquisition channel for merchants and instant gratification for both merchants and consumers by offering refund certainty, speed, and choice."

Key data from U.S. consumers in "Where Is My Refund? Understanding When, Where & How Consumers Want Their Money Back" includes:

78% received an e-commerce refund in the last 90 days
93% want a choice in terms of how they get their refund
92% would complete checkout if guaranteed a refund
79% would increase the order value if offered refund certainty
90% would make repeat purchases from a merchant if offered instant refunds
83% would leave a positive review for merchants who offer instant refunds
56% have heard of instant refunds

In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated total U.S. retail sales reached $7.1 trillion and that approximately one-fifth of everything bought in the U.S. is returned every year. That equates to $1.4 trillion worth of refunds and additionally, items bought online have a 3 to 5 times higher return rate than items bought in-store. Although several hundred billion dollars have been invested in reducing friction and creating a seamless online buying experience, the backend of the checkout experience still remains antiquated.

Research by the Baymard Institute shows average cart abandonment rates are 69% across the industry and disputes cost merchants and consumers $100 billion each year. The transaction friction has moved to refunds with a monolithic broken process that's outdated for the instant gratification driven digital economy. According to the National Retail Federation, return fraud is now estimated to cost 13.7% per transaction, hurting merchants and consumers.

TodayPay decouples the refund, which is a payment solution, from the return, which is a logistics problem. "This helps merchants compete end-to-end on customer experience based on the speed of a payment, instead of the speed of broken supply chains," said Balkin. For consumers, it means the ability to get paid instantly with multiple redemption choices, instead of status quo, which is simply a reversal back to the original payment method on the next month's credit card statement.

Last week at CES 2024, TodayPay announced seasoned Visa executive Mike West has joined as a Strategic Advisor. West joins TodayPay with more than 25 years of experience in payments including senior roles at Visa, PayPal and American Express. West helped Visa Direct expand globally to support successfully scale the business to over 8 billion card, account, and digital wallet endpoints, across 200 countries, with double-digit year-over-year growth.

Read Where Is My Refund Consumer Study & White Paper
The study can be downloaded here and accessed at https://refunds.expert/

About TodayPay
TodayPay is the world's first faster payment solution helping merchants offer their customers instant refunds in multiple payment choices. TodayPay is a B2B technology company pioneering a new category in payments called Refunds as a Service™. TodayPay has commercial relationships with Visa, Amazon Web Services, Marqeta, Alloy, GrailPay, Astra, Tango and Shippo.

About TodayPay Founder
Prior to founding TodayPay, Jeremy Balkin served as Managing Director for J.P. Morgan in New York City, where he led fintech innovation and corporate development in the Payments business. Mr. Balkin is well known across the fintech industry for coining the phrase, "Payments are eating the world" and he received the PayTech Award in 2022 recognizing his leadership across the payments industry.

Contact:
[email protected]

SOURCE TodayPay Inc.