Accept Credit Card Payments for Faster, Easier Sales
Why get left behind? When almost every business across the world is moving towards cashless payment, your business needs to stay in sync with customer expectations.
Industry Trends
As early as 2005-2006, a study conducted by Dove Consulting on consumer payment preferences provided interesting insights:
- Most customers prefer payment options that offer comfort and speed
- Debit cards are a popular choice, with credit cards following closely behind. Cash is on the decline, while check payments seem to be losing ground
- With greater awareness of ID theft, fraud etc, consumers are also concerned about security and privacy
Keeping these factors in mind, trends remain robust with debit cards still popular with Americans, while credit cards are especially favored for big ticket purchases. Emerging options like mobile payment by card, mobile wallets, and P2P payment continue to provide a range of choices.
Charge.com is a card processing company that offers flexible options to suit your unique business needs, preferences and budget. Available options include POS systems combined with merchant accounts, mobile payment processing, and online payment gateways.
Accepting Card Payments Ramps Up Your Business
Whatever the size and nature of your business, customer satisfaction is surely a top priority. It’s crucial to track consumer trends, spending behavior and preferences if you want to stay competitive and relevant.
Card payment acceptance:
- Makes your business more customer-friendly
- Keeps your business competitive and levels the playing field with your rivals
- Establishes trust and legitimacy for your business because customers already have trust in the credit/debit card brand
- Helps to associate your brand with the card company’s reputation by displaying their logo on your website or in your premises
- Keeps you in sync with customer expectations
- Builds loyalty for your business because customers get additional benefits from using their cards to make payments
- Encourages impulse buys and higher spending: customers have time to re-think their decision to buy if they have to write a check or go to an ATM for cash to make payments
- Better cash flow: Unlike check payments, card payments enable the funds to be credited to your account much sooner
- Better reporting and reconciliation
- No need to follow up on bounced checks
- Keeps you and your premises safer by avoiding storage of large amounts of cash
You can enhance customer experience by partnering with the right card processing company. This means finding the right processor based on the type of business you run, its location, and their experience with this type of business.
Keep a few important aspects in mind while you enable card payments. Ensure that you use only reliable, approved software and equipment and PCI-compliant hardware. Never improperly store customer card payment data. Dispose of all customer payment information properly. Train your staff in best practices for handling customer card data.
If you run an online business, ensure that you have the right shipping and billing address, especially in card-not-present transactions. Efficiency and safety should be your priority, along with ease and convenience for your customer.
For more information on accepting credit card payments for faster, easier sales, or to sign up for a merchant account, please call (888) 924-2743 or go to Charge.com.
