How America Pays: What 1,000 US shoppers told Nuvei

For most US shoppers, how they pay is a deliberate choice with consequences for whether a sale completes and how a brand is seen. Nuvei's How America Pays survey polled 1,000 US consumers in April 2026 and found a consistent pattern: people hold firm preferences about payment, they will walk away when those preferences are not met, and they are not yet ready to hand purchasing decisions to AI.

Three figures anchor the report. Sixty percent of US consumers strongly prefer to personally review and approve every purchase before paying. Roughly 1 in 5 (21%) would abandon a purchase rather than use a payment method they do not want, and more than a third (37%) lean that way to some degree. And 45% would rather wait and see how others use AI for purchasing before trying it themselves. Payment choice is a revenue and brand variable, and readiness for AI-driven purchasing has not yet arrived.

How much does payment choice matter to US shoppers?

Payment is a habit, and habit is sticky. Roughly 4 in 10 US consumers (41%) hold a strong or exclusive preference for paying the same way across most purchases, and only about 9% report no preference at all. Consumers also distinguish between methods rather than treating them as interchangeable: 39% strongly reject the idea that all payment methods feel broadly the same. For a merchant, that combination matters, because a shopper with a fixed payment habit who does not find it at checkout has a reason to leave.

Is card-only checkout enough?

For a large share of US consumers, cards alone do not cover how they want to pay. Only 28% strongly agree that standard card payments are enough, 34% strongly want more than cards, and nearly half (49%) lean toward wanting more. That is the clearest case in the data for investing in alternative payment methods: the demand that a card-only checkout leaves behind is measurable, not hypothetical. A merchant weighing whether to add wallets, real-time bank transfers, or installments is looking at close to half the surveyed public asking for exactly that.

Will shoppers abandon a purchase over payment options?

Some will, and the share is large enough to move revenue. When a preferred payment method is missing, roughly 1 in 5 US consumers (21%) hold a strong or exclusive preference not to complete the purchase, and 37% lean toward not completing it to some degree. On the other side, 48% would complete the purchase anyway, and about 15% have no strong view. The commercial reading is that payment method coverage is a lever on completed sales. For a merchant with significant online volume, closing the gap between what shoppers want to use and what the checkout accepts converts abandonment into recovered revenue at the payment step, before any change to pricing or marketing.

Do payment options affect how shoppers see a brand?

For a meaningful share, the payment experience shapes brand perception, not only whether the sale closes. A quarter of US consumers (26%) strongly say payment options influence how they view a brand, and nearly 4 in 10 (38%) say so to some degree. Brand trust alone does not carry every shopper through checkout either: 42% strongly reject the idea that they rely on a retailer's brand for confidence at the point of payment, which suggests that familiar, recognized payment methods act as a parallel trust signal. Checkout, on this evidence, is a brand touchpoint as much as a transactional step.

Are US consumers ready to let AI make purchases?

Not yet, and the gap is about control rather than curiosity. The strongest single result in the survey is on approval: 60% of US consumers strongly prefer to personally review and approve every purchase before paying, and roughly 7 in 10 (72%) lean that way. On AI specifically, 45% would rather wait and see how others use AI for purchasing before trying it themselves, rising to nearly 6 in 10 (59%) when slighter preferences are included, the highest concentration of caution on any AI question in the study.

The implication runs against the idea that autonomous purchasing is imminent. Adoption of AI-driven purchasing is a wave most consumers are watching from the shore, and the constraint is trust and control at the moment of payment. The infrastructure question is not whether consumers are ready, but whether payment infrastructure can support both human-approved and, in time, delegated purchasing when they are. That is the same conclusion Nuvei's separate research on agentic commerce reaches: consumers are ready for AI to shop well before they are ready for it to pay.

What this means for merchants

The through line for a commercial leader is that how a checkout is built determines how much of existing demand it converts. Payment habits are fixed, cards alone leave a large segment underserved, and a fifth to a third of shoppers will walk when their method is missing, so payment method coverage reads directly into completed sales and brand perception. Nuvei is a global payments provider whose alternative payment methods and authorization optimization address exactly those gaps, expanding the methods a checkout accepts and recovering approvals that would otherwise be lost. On AI, the data argues for building the payment layer first and letting autonomy arrive on top of it, with support for both human-in-the-loop approval and delegated flows, which is the design behind Nuvei's work on agentic payments.

About the data

Nuvei's How America Pays survey polled 1,000 US consumers in April 2026, gender-balanced at 50% male and 50% female. Each question asked respondents to place themselves on a seven-point scale between two opposing statements, from an exclusive preference for one statement to an exclusive preference for the other. Unless a sentence says otherwise, the figures in this report reflect the combined share expressing a strong or exclusive preference. The full interactive report is available on the How America Pays page.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nuvei's How America Pays survey?

‍A 2026 study of 1,000 US consumers on how they pay, covering payment habits, checkout abandonment, brand perception, and attitudes toward AI-driven purchasing.

How many US consumers would abandon a purchase if their preferred payment method is unavailable?

‍Roughly 1 in 5 (21%) hold a strong or exclusive preference not to complete the purchase, and 37% lean toward not completing it to some degree.

Do US consumers think card-only checkout is enough?

‍Only 28% strongly agree that standard cards are enough. 34% strongly want more than cards, and nearly half (49%) lean that way.

Do payment options affect brand perception?

‍Yes, for a meaningful share. A quarter (26%) strongly say payment options shape how they view a brand, and 38% say so to some degree.

Are US consumers ready to let AI make purchases for them?

‍Not yet. 60% strongly prefer to personally review and approve every purchase, and 45% would rather wait and see how others use AI for purchasing before trying it themselves.

How large is the payment-habit effect?

‍Roughly 4 in 10 US consumers (41%) hold a strong or exclusive preference for paying the same way across most purchases.

Who conducted the survey and when?

‍Nuvei, in April 2026, among 1,000 US consumers, gender-balanced, using a seven-point preference scale.

Related from Nuvei

• Consumers are ready for AI to shop. They are not ready for it to pay.
• Agentic commerce: what it is and how payments have to change
• Mexico eCommerce: local acquiring, OXXO Pay, SPEI, and installments
• Alternative payment methods
• Authorization optimization