All too often, businesses and other organizations worry about how they can increase their sales and profitability. But, the one thing some firms forget is providing simple customer payment options to pay their bills and invoices with ease.
For example, did you know that some businesses (typically sole proprietors) only accept cash payments from their customers? These days, convenience is essential in the business world, and so you should offer convenient ways for your customers to pay you.
With that in mind, here are some helpful suggestions to make it easier for your customers to give you their money.
Accept Card Payments
One thing you might have noticed about the COVID-19 pandemic is how most people prefer to pay for items using cards or contactless payments. The former means customers don’t need to carry cash, and the latter helps reduce the spread of diseases like COVID-19.
These days, some of the best credit card machines on the market offer contactless customer payment options, meaning you can offer your customers three additional card options (debit card, credit card, and contactless) on top of cash acceptance.
What’s more, you don’t even need to get a card machine from your bank. Many private firms offer payment machines and card processing services, often at better rates than those your bank provides.
Online Payment Options
Aside from being contactless, one of the top COVID-19-safe customer payment options is online processing. If you run a business that usually invoices its customers for any work conducted, you need to offer online payment processing options.
You could offer online options alongside digital payment systems in several ways. One way is to provide a link to a processing page on your website for invoices. Another is to accept all orders and payments through an e-commerce website.
As with offline machines, there are many options for online customer payment providers. Whichever one you choose, make sure it charges low processing fees and processes all popular cards such as Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
Invite Customers to Apply for Credit
If you primarily run a B2B service to your customers, it could make sense for your business to invite customers to apply for credit. But, of course, you wouldn’t offer any customer credit facilities without first checking their creditworthiness.
But, credit facilities could open a wealth of opportunities for your firm to do business with other companies that rely on their reputation for paying promptly to other companies.
The amount of credit you offer each customer will depend on their payment history with you, their credit score, and other factors such as how long they’ve been established.
You could combine credit facilities with online payment options for credit account customers so they can pay your invoices with ease.
Conclusion
The above ideas are by no means an exhaustive list of customer payment options for your customers to pay their bills. However, they highlight some of the most popular options and ones that you can implement in your business relatively quickly.
