With the onset of digitalization, it has become quite clear that collecting payments with the cash, cheque or only bank transfer has become limited. At many places, these do not even exist because of the online payment methods trending. The businesses need to expand their horizons by providing multiple online payment options to the customers. This article discusses the reasons why it is necessary to do so.
1. The trend of Cashless Payments
The first trendsetting event to collect online payments was demonetization. Later, COVID-19 made customers more inclined towards making cashless payments. And so this is one of the main reasons why businesses need to install a system to collect payments online. They need to keep up with the trends.
2. Customer Preferences
However, the best way the business can collect online payments is the payment gateway, this is because it offers all the customer preferred payment options at one place and so the customer dropouts that happen due to the non-availability of the payment options can be avoided. They can pay with whatever option they want to pay, all the payment methods such as debit cards, credit cards, wallets, UPI, net banking, etc would be there at the checkout. Mobile Wallets (36%) is the most preferred payment method option for online customers worldwide, next is credit cards (23%), and then comes debit cards (12%), as per the Worldpay Global Payments Report.
3. There are advantages with Website or App
The purchase decision of the customer is influenced by these top reasons – the lowest price, good delivery options, easy return policy, payment options, stock information, and details about the product/service. This is quite convenient when there is a website or app for selling your products. Further, another report says that 30% of the customers would rather return to a website they’ve purchased from in the past. This is a part of customer retention.
The online payment acceptance with the help of a website or app, further adds to this advantage. The payment gateway can be integrated with the website or app which in turn would add to the success of the business resulting in the retention of the customer, providing various payment methods in a secure manner. As per McKinsey’s report, mobile commerce is responsible for 48% of digital sales in 2017.
4. Effortless increase in Transaction Volume
The online payments would help increase in the transaction volume and numbers. Cash payments have limits which do not exist in the online payments. The businesses collect the online payments with the payment gateway and it directly goes into the bank account, there are no requirements for extra administration or management which is needed in the case of cash collection. The payment made through online methods is safe because there will not be any fear of theft. Also, no extra staff is required to handle cash payments.
5. Retain Offline Customers
As per the available reports, 6 out of every 10 small businesses did not have a website for their business in 2018. 35% of small business owners feel that their business is too small for a website. The prime reasons why people do not make an online purchase are wanting to see and touch the item before finalizing the purchase and that the delivery is taking much time.
This fact makes it clear that there are businesses without websites and of course there are offline stores. Moreover, there are people who would like to make physical purchases too. This does not mean that in both cases the customers would prefer the cash or other traditional payment method and this is the reason the business needs to have the arrangement to collect online payments.
Payment Gateway like Paykun provides online payment collection facilities with the Payment link feature. Payment Links do not require a website or a mobile app to collect online payments. Thus with the payment gateway’s payment link feature businesses can provide multiple payment methods and retain the offline customers.
6. Record Management
The payment gateway like PayKun provides a merchant dashboard tool. This is a smart tool that gives all the information about the payments, orders, and customers. The payment gateways process regular settlements, so the records of the incoming payments to your bank account can also be traced. The details about the past and present payment links can also be obtained from this payment gateway tool.
7. Tallying Payments
Manual entries need to be managed when the payment is accepted through cash or bank transfer. This is quite a time consuming and a process requiring expenses because it would need staff, its management, and supervision. Without that, it becomes a tedious task for tallying and tracking the payments to respective customers. The whole reconciliation of the customer, payment source, and payment records becomes easy when a business collects the online payments with the help of payment gateway.
8. Security Aspects
Security is one of the important reasons to collect online payments. The payment gateway which is PCI DSS compliant is the most secure and safe because PCI DSS is considered the highest level of security standard. Along with that, there are other standards, for example, PayKun follows AES Encryption standards and also is SSL certified.
9. Cost-Effectiveness and Time Saving
As mentioned earlier, cash and bank payments would require its management and supervision too. This would need the respective expenses. Cash and cheque payments would need a personal visit to the bank for the deposits. Whereas, online payments would be easy and time-saving. It would not require bank visits as the amount will be directly received in the bank. There will only be an affordable transaction charge.
Concluding
So what are you waiting for? Whatever size or type of business you have you need to start collecting online payments and provide various options to your customers to pay. You may try PayKun Payment Gateway. Enquire now at [email protected]!
