Thriving through the Thanksgiving surge: resilient payments for Retail

With the upcoming holiday season, businesses across all industries are preparing for an unprecedented increase in payment transactions. From travel bookings and hotel reservations to concert tickets and online gift shopping, the upcoming rush will be massive. Last year, 134 million consumers shopped online, pouring over $38 billion into the economy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone. As consumers rely more and more on online payments this holiday season, payment systems are under tremendous pressure, and any disruption in these systems could lead to catastrophic financial losses and irreparable damage to brand reputation.

What happens when systems fail?

Disruptions during the crucial buying season have devastating consequences for large B2B businesses. Delayed deliveries, order cancellations and customer churn can cost millions, while the damage to brand reputation is irreparable. The stakes have never been higher.

In addition, the strong growth of financial inclusion has increased reliance on online payment platforms. A stark reminder of these risks occurred in July 2024, when the CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payment System) suffered a technical outage due to a disruption in the global Swift network. Around 200,000 payments a day were affected by this incident, which shows how quickly systems can break down at peak times. With the holiday season upon us, investing in resilience engineering is not just a strategy, it’s a necessity.

To prevent these disruptions, payment companies need to invest in resiliency engineering. This includes implementing fault-tolerant architectures, such as distributed systems and active-active failover, to minimize the risk of a single point of failure. In addition, real-time monitoring, load balancing, automated failover mechanisms and simulating outages to identify vulnerabilities and proactively detect problems can ensure that any issues are quickly identified and resolved to prevent widespread outages.

Getting the act together 

Businesses need to prioritize the reliability of their payment systems to ensure they can withstand the demands of holiday rush. By doing so, they not only protect their bottom line, but also strengthen the loyalty and trust of their customers. Ensuring smooth transactions is critical to safeguarding revenue, maintaining brand reputation and fostering lasting customer relationships in an increasingly competitive environment. Prepare to deliver a seamless shopping experience to make the holiday season a celebration of success, not a cautionary failure.

Benefits of resilience engineering for the Retail and Payment Industry 

When resilience is not prioritized, core business functions in the retail and financial sectors are vulnerable, increasing the risk of costly outages. By incorporating resilience engineering, these organizations gain critical insight into processes and assets and are prepared for unforeseen service or process failures. Find out how building resilience tests strengthens payment systems: