One of the most important financial functions for every business is the final transaction made by the end-user for a product or service. Although it’s a generic function, small tweaks to payment methods could attract bigger profits and benefit your business.
For instance, advertising or mentioning a variety of options makes customers feel comfortable. Doing so can boost sales significantly. You need to allow your finance team to furnish this facility by providing them with the freedom to broaden the scope of your payment system. Doing so will allow your customers to pay you for your product/service without hassles and help you prop up sales figures.
Your customers can belong to diverse categories in terms of geographics, demographics, culture, and educational or occupational levels. These differences can highly influence how they conduct business, make purchases, or do daily transactions.
How certain payments evolved over time
Previously, a significant number of transactions used to be done physically. Going back again by a decade, almost every transaction was done using cash. Shops and malls didn’t have QR codes. The best option everyone had was to accept credit card payments.
Although the simplicity of those times is often missed, it had its share of problems, such as security issues that led to a lot of fraud. Also, certain studies suggest that the room for human error for such payments was much more than today’s scenarios.
Only recently, with the introduction of automated payment methods, businesses have adopted simpler and more efficient payment processes that have increased productivity by a significant margin.
However, tangible payments by cash or cheque are still widely practiced across the globe. This means the number of payment methods has drastically expanded and is ever-growing.
For instance, recent reports from Forbes Magazine state that Apple is looking to implement a POS system to their phones that will enable businesses to accept payments without a third party device but just their iPhones.
The Solution
One of the best solutions to provide a seamless transactional experience is offering as many payment options for your customers as possible. No matter how prepared or unprepared your customers are in terms of new payment methods or lack of cash. You won’t miss a sale because of this. If they ask you for a Google Pay facility, be ready with it. Or, if they make other requests such as Internet banking or wire transfer, present them with solutions. There is a multitude of payment options available worldwide. All are working towards providing better security and ease by reducing the number of clicks to make a payment. Modern consumers love these options and quickly adopt them as soon as companies market them. The goal here is to not miss out on receiving payment from a willing customer to your nearest competition. If you repeatedly lose sales this way, the more adversely it will affect your business in the long term.
Here’s a pro tip. Try to keep an open mind and seek updated professional advice when it is about payment methods and finances. Research which of those methods works best and is preferred by your target audience.
To Summarize
There was a time people thought credit and debit cards were solutions to all the problems that came with writing cheques in the 80s. Today, we have many payment methods that are constantly evolving and trying to reduce interactions as much as possible. New technologies such as Apple’s iPhone integration that accepts credit card payments aim to avoid as many complications as possible and make the payments more seamless. Can payment systems be any simpler? We are yet to discover.
