The ability to take cashless payments for your business, either in-storeor online has benefits far beyond customer convenience. Not having tocollect, count up and transport cash is the most obvious one. Having arunning total of all of your transactions in real time is another. Distance is less of an obstacle, and accepting foreign currencies ismade a lot easier.
Aside from the standard credit, debit card and bank transfers, what aresome of the emerging cashless payment methods that your business couldtake advantage of?
E-wallets
E-wallet services such as Paypal and Mastercard’s Masterpass allowscustomers to quickly and securely make online purchases from a number ofsources (different cards or accounts for example) without having toenter banking or address details over and over again for each individualpurchase.
By speeding up the checkout process, e-wallets reduce abandoned baskets,ensuring more customers complete their purchases. Supporting mobiledevices like smartphones and tablets, allows for easy on-the-movepurchases, expanding your audience reach.
Mobile payments
Mobile payment services such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Payall offer the convenience of using an app on your smartphone or tabletfor in-store purchases, much in the same way you would present acontactless card.
There are obvious advantages to accepting mobile payments for smallbusinesses. Incentive schemes can be linked to the app, removing theneed for paper tokens and stickers. Mobile payment apps tend to havelower fees than card companies, reducing costs for you, which can bepassed on to the consumer as lower prices.
Smartphone security measures are improving in general, with newdevelopments such as facial recognition, fingerprint scanning and voicedetection, meaning that the risk of payment fraud is decreasing all thetime.
Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies are a type of digital currency that use cryptography tomaintain a secure, encrypted ledger of every transaction made, with theadvantage of almost instantaneous transfer of money anywhere in theworld. With the recent rise in interest in cryptocurrencies such asBitcoin, you may be considering it as a method of accepting payments. But there are some reasons you to be wary as a business owner.
The value of cryptocurrencies can wildly fluctuate, so taking paymentsthrough this method can be risky. Cryptocurrencies are often used inconjunction with illegal activities such as money laundering, whichmainstream businesses might not want to be associated with. Security isalso an issue, with many major hacks of Bitcoin exchanges taking placeover the last few years.
Checkout-free shopping
The eventual “holy grail” of cashless payments is checkout-freeshopping. Being able to enter a shop, filling a basket or cart with yourpurchases, and then having the charge for those items added up andbilled to you automatically before you leave. No presentation of cash,card or mobile phone required.
This scenario may seem a long way off, but Amazon are currently betatesting a store in Seattle (only open to selected company employees fornow) that uses “computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning” toprovide a “Just-Walk-Out shopping experience”. It remains to be seen ifcheckout-free shopping is widely adopted, but with the relevanttechnology falling in price, it may be only a matter of time.
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