Merchant-owned apps beat websites on 11 of 14 checkout features and grew sales faster than any channel. Only 13% of merchants call their checkout optimal.
Alpha Score of 73 reflects strong overall profile with strong momentum, moderate value, strong quality, moderate sentiment.
Merchant-owned mobile apps are growing sales faster than websites or physical stores, and they already carry more checkout features than either channel. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "Global Digital Shopping Index: Merchant Edition," commissioned by Visa Acceptance Solutions, surveyed merchants on 14 checkout capabilities. Apps outperformed merchant websites on 11 of them.
Among merchants selling through their own apps, 57% reported sales growth over the prior 12 months. That compares with 55% for websites and 54% for physical stores. The app advantage starts with authentication. The report found that 42% of surveyed merchants offered biometric login in their apps. Only 26% did on websites.
QR-code checkout was available through 59% of apps and half of websites. Digital wallet autofill hit 63% in apps against 56% on websites. Apps also led on one-click checkout and stored credentials, though by slimmer margins of 3 percentage points each.
Those features matter because a customer who is already authenticated and has stored payment information can complete a transaction with fewer steps. The merchant controls the environment where identity, payment credentials, loyalty benefits and checkout tools operate together.
Yet the same data shows how uneven the infrastructure remains. Only 13% of surveyed merchants described their checkout as optimal. A third said considerable or significant upgrades were needed. Small and medium-sized businesses trailed large merchants by 12 percentage points on website biometrics, 11 points on stored credentials and 10 points on digital wallet autofill.
The report also tracks how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape commerce. Among surveyed merchants, 61% agreed that AI-generated results would influence purchases more than traditional search results in 2026. More than half said they expected AI agents to select payment methods based on fees and rewards. Some 56% expected agents to complete transactions autonomously.
Most merchants cannot yet distinguish AI-driven traffic. Only 23% said they could clearly identify both AI traffic and the purchases it produced. Another 21% could detect agentic traffic but could not attribute sales to it. The remaining 56% reported inconsistent visibility or no ability to distinguish AI traffic at all.
That tracking gap matters because AI agents will need structured information about products, prices, payment options and rewards. Merchants will need attribution systems that link agent activity to transaction value. The merchant-owned app, where identity and checkout are already integrated, offers a logical starting point for that infrastructure.
Not every retailer needs a proprietary app. Development costs, download fatigue and uneven customer engagement remain real constraints, especially for smaller merchants. The report's findings make a narrower point: the channel merchants control most directly also carries the widest set of modern checkout features, and it is the one growing fastest.
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