How Payment Failures Lead to Cart Abandonment

You find the product you want, add it to your cart and enter your details.

After making all that effort, the page keeps loading the moment you try to make the payment.

Your preferred payment option is missing.

Or worse, the payment fails and you are asked to start again.

But how many times will a customer go through the same steps? Search for the product again, add it to the cart, re-enter the details and attempt another payment?

Most people will not keep trying. They will close the tab and buy from another merchant where the payment works the first time.

According to the Adyen Retail Index 2026, 30% of shoppers abandon a purchase when the payment takes too long, while 35% leave when they cannot use their preferred payment method.

For merchants, these are not customers who changed their minds halfway through shopping. They reached the final step ready to buy, only to be lost during payment and that is how a poor payment experience quietly turns into cart abandonment.