When it comes to business, the phrase if it’s not broken, don’t fix it doesn’t apply. Businesses are constantly evolving and they’re constantly improving and your business should be doing the same thing. One area of your business that will need constant evolution and change is your technology. The business technology that was available 20 years ago is vastly different to the business tech that is available today. One of those areas that should be looked at regularly is your business payment systems.
At one stage you may have been all about cash in a storefront, but now more things are moving digital, which means you need to start embracing more digital ways of your customers paying for your products. Point of sale software has evolved massively, which means that you need to be looking at how your business can keep up with that. The better your payment systems, the less frustrated your customers will be. If you’re still on the fence about why you should start updating your business payment systems now, let’s take you through some of the biggest reasons.
- Payments themselves have evolved. It’s not just the technology that has changed, but it’s the payment processes themselves. Terminals for payment now are so far ahead of what they used to be that people can now pay with a phone and a digital card rather than just a physical card. No one is putting their card into the reader and typing their PIN anymore. They’re just tapping and going if you don’t have that ability for customers to do that in your business. You might find that you’re way behind because customers want to be able to get things done quickly.
- You’re not accepting all cards. A good reason to upgrade your current payment system is that you can’t accept all cards. It’s frustrating for a customer to spend time in a store, find what they want, get to the checkout, and find out that they don’t accept a specific card. Not only will this lose you a sale, you then have the extra burden of putting all of those customer items back on the shelves. You can’t just have a debit card machine and expect it to be cut anymore. You need to make sure that people can pay with cash, debit, or common credit cards. Any limits of these options can have negative repercussions on your business.
- It’s too slow. People don’t have time to stand around and wait in line. So if your payment systems are too slow and they’re not connecting to the banking quick enough, people will abandon their sale literally in front of you. You need your systems to be prompt because people will only give you a few seconds of their time before they start to get impatient. They are relying on your business to run smoothly and even if your system is operating perfectly, the checkout time can’t be too long for customers. If you have a queue going round the shop, people are not going to want to purchase from you.
