Payments teams at global merchants increasingly face a question that sounds simple but is difficult to answer: how can payment acceptance help acquire new customers?

Adding another payment method may increase transaction volume. But volume growth alone does not necessarily mean customer growth.

The instinct is often to identify the payment method attracting the most attention, integrate it into the checkout and move on. The problem is that the most popular or fastest-growing method is not automatically the one that will bring new customers to a merchant.

In Latin America, this distinction matters even more. Payment preferences vary significantly across markets, while some of the region's fastest-growing payment rails are already widely available to merchants.

The real opportunity is therefore not simply to add more logos to the checkout.

It is to understand which customers a merchant wants to reach, identify what is preventing them from paying today, and use payment infrastructure to remove that barrier.

Two common missteps in merchant strategy

Under pressure to improve conversion and acquisition, payments teams often make one of two assumptions.

The first misstep is assuming that the fastest-growing payment method is automatically the best acquisition opportunity.

Buy Now, Pay Later is a useful example. Despite the attention it receives, the data shows that BNPL is the fastest-growing payment method in only two of the markets analyzed: Mexico, at 21.7%, and South Africa, at 36.7% CAGR between 2024 and 2028.

In most markets, another payment method is growing faster.

Cash-based methods, such as vouchers and boletos, present a different issue. They can still represent meaningful payment volume in some economies, but their share is generally declining. Their existing relevance does not necessarily mean they are creating a new digital customer acquisition opportunity.

Across many emerging markets, the strongest growth is coming from account-to-account payments, digital wallets or mobile money, depending on the market.

This highlights an important distinction, as the fastest-growing payment methods are often those that merchants have already integrated.

Consider Latin America.

According to PCMI, A2A payments were projected to be the fastest-growing e-commerce payment method in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru among the Latin American markets included in its analysis.

In Brazil specifically, PCMI's data indicates that A2A payments, led by Pix, represented 41.7% of e-commerce payment share in 2025, with PCMI projecting a 17.8% CAGR from 2024 to 2028.

In Colombia, A2A payments represented 37.5% of e-commerce payment share in 2025, with PCMI projecting a 16.2% CAGR through 2028.

Fastest-growing e-commerce payment method by market

Source: PCMI, 2025 E-commerce Data Library. Data based on verified 2024 figures; 2025 onward figures are PCMI forecasts.

The implication is important.

If the payment method driving market growth has already been integrated, simply adding it cannot become the merchant's new customer acquisition strategy.

That leads to the second misstep: assuming that adding another payment method will automatically create incremental customers. It often does not.

A new payment method can simply redistribute existing transaction volume. Customers who already purchase from the merchant may switch from cards to a wallet, from cards to BNPL, or from another payment method to A2A.

The merchant sees a change in its payment mix, but not necessarily an increase in its customer base.

Payment volume growth and new customer growth are different outcomes.

For payments teams measured on acquisition, this distinction is important.

Payment strategy starts with the customer

Adding a new payment method is easy to frame as a growth initiative. The harder question is whether that integration will actually bring customers who were previously unable to complete a purchase, unwilling to use the available options or simply more likely to choose a competitor.

That distinction matters in Latin America because payment preferences vary significantly from one market to another. A payment method that is essential in Brazil may have limited relevance in another country, while a locally dominant wallet or account-to-account rail can determine whether an international merchant feels familiar to consumers.

Before expanding the payment mix, merchants therefore need to understand how customers in each market already pay and where the current checkout experience creates barriers.

In practice, the opportunity tends to fall into three different situations.

1. Reaching consumers entering digital commerce

Payment infrastructure can still play a role in bringing new consumers into e-commerce, particularly in markets where digital adoption is less mature.

But the size of this opportunity has changed. More than 80% of consumers in emerging markets already shop online (PCMI Data), meaning that simply making one additional local payment option available will not necessarily create a new customer base.

For consumers who are genuinely new to digital commerce, the relevant payment experience may be the one that gives them enough familiarity and trust to make their first online purchase. Depending on the market, that could be an A2A payment, a digital wallet or another locally established payment method.

For merchants, the implication is important: payment infrastructure can support customer acquisition when it removes a genuine barrier to entering digital commerce. Once that barrier disappears, the role of payments changes.

2. Entering new customer categories

There is another opportunity among consumers who already buy online but have not yet adopted a particular type of digital service.

Consider a customer who regularly purchases physical goods online but has never subscribed to a recurring service. Or someone comfortable with digital commerce who has never booked travel, purchased software or used an online financial product.

In these cases, the payment experience can influence whether the new category feels accessible.

Brazil offers a useful example. Recurring Pix extends the familiarity of the country's dominant A2A infrastructure into subscription-based use cases. The underlying payment rail is familiar to consumers, while the product experience adapts it to a different commercial model.

The same principle can apply across Latin America. Merchants entering a new category or launching in a new country need to consider not only which payment methods are available, but which payment behaviors consumers already understand and trust.

That can make the payment experience part of the bridge between an established digital habit and a new commercial use case.

3. Winning customers who already buy elsewhere

The third opportunity is not about bringing consumers into e-commerce or introducing them to a new category. These customers are already there, but they simply buy from another merchant.

For this segment, payment becomes part of the competitive experience. A customer who already knows how to shop online has fewer reasons to tolerate unnecessary friction at checkout. That makes several factors relevant: transaction success, checkout speed, familiar local payment options, authorization performance and the commercial conditions attached to a payment.

A merchant may also create additional value around an existing payment rail through installments, cashback or other incentives.

The important point is that customer acquisition does not necessarily require another payment method. It can come from making the payment experience more successful, more familiar or more valuable than the alternatives available to the customer.

This leads to a broader way of looking at payment strategy.

Rather than treating every new payment integration as a growth opportunity, merchants can ask where payment infrastructure is actually limiting their ability to acquire or convert customers.

How Beeteller can help

For global businesses expanding into Latin America, understanding payment behavior market by market is only part of the challenge. The next question is how to turn that knowledge into a payment infrastructure that can actually operate across the region.

Beeteller helps global businesses connect to Latin America's payment ecosystem through API-based infrastructure designed for local payment flows and cross-border operations.

The experience at checkout is equally important. Offering the right payment method only creates value if customers can complete the transaction successfully.

Beeteller's infrastructure is designed to support a checkout experience that is simple for the customer and sophisticated behind the scenes, with fraud prevention and transaction controls operating without unnecessarily adding friction to legitimate purchases.

That allows businesses to focus on three interconnected priorities:

• Connectivity: access local payment methods and payment rails through API-based infrastructure.

• Conversion: create a smoother checkout experience designed to reduce unnecessary friction and support successful transactions.

• Security: apply fraud prevention and risk controls while preserving a seamless experience for legitimate customers.

• Scalability: expand across Latin American markets without rebuilding the payment infrastructure from the ground up.

• Cross-border operations: support payment flows across different markets through a technology layer built for regional operations.

The objective is to build an infrastructure in which local payment capabilities, a frictionless checkout and intelligent fraud prevention work together.

For companies entering Latin America, that means payments can become more than a local adaptation at checkout. They can become part of a scalable infrastructure for acquiring, converting and retaining customers across the region.

Talk to Beeteller to explore how API-based payment infrastructure can simplify your expansion across Latin America.