Payment Radar
Why Canadian Retailers Are Losing Sales They’ve Already Won
The article reports on Interac's new digital wallet, Konek, aimed at reducing online shopping cart abandonment in Canada. It cites research indicating that Canadian businesses lose significant revenue due to checkout friction.
Payment RadarOriginal source: Retail Insider Canada · linked publisher media; native reuse rights require confirmation 
What changed
Interac has launched Konek, a new digital wallet designed to simplify online checkout for Canadian merchants. The solution aims to reduce cart abandonment by leveraging existing banking relationships and using tokenization: Replacing a card or bank account number with a stand-in value (a token) that has no value if stolen, defined by EMVCo for cards and by ISO 20022 for account tokens. This shift addresses a direct revenue leak for retailers who lose sales when customers face friction during the payment process.
Why a business should care
Checkout friction is a proven cause of lost revenue. Canadian businesses report losing significant monthly income due to abandoned carts, with some estimates ranging from $1,000 to $21,000 per month. By streamlining the payment step, merchants can recover these lost sales. The value proposition is straightforward: fewer drop-offs mean more completed transactions.
Who it affects
This change primarily impacts Canadian online retailers and e-commerce merchants. Any business operating in Canada that processes digital payments and experiences cart abandonment due to complex checkout flows is directly affected.
What to consider doing
Pull your current checkout analytics report to identify the specific step where the highest percentage of users abandon their carts. If the drop-off occurs during payment method selection or entry, contact your payment gateway vendor to ask about integrating Konek or similar one-tap wallet solutions.
Uncertainty and risks
The article promoting Konek appears to be promotional in nature, likely sponsored by Interac. While the problem of checkout friction is real, the specific revenue recovery claims and integration benefits should be verified through independent merchant feedback or pilot testing before committing to a full integration. The long-term impact on transaction fees and customer data ownership remains unclear until detailed commercial terms are published. Interac has launched a new digital wallet, Konek, designed to simplify online checkout for Canadian merchants. This change offers merchants a new tool to reduce checkout friction and potentially recover lost revenue from abandoned carts. The article provides evidence of the revenue loss associated with checkout friction and details how Konek addresses these issues through tokenization and familiar banking interfaces.
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