Businesses of all sizes today have the unique challenge of choosing which way they want to shape their payment solution space. Since the advent of e-commerce in the early 1980s, payments solutions have been snowballing more and more innovations in how customers can complete transactions. The adoption rate of online payments via credit card has risen exponentially in recent years as well, making it a norm rather than an exception.
Put simply, businesses who refuse to accept online payment solutions often see a downturn in their sales. But the ability to upgrade your payment solution space, especially as a high-risk merchant, can seem limited when the costs of payment solutions seriously affect your overhead. Luckily new advancements in payment solutions address these issues, in addition to improving customer convenience.
Read on for three advancements in the payment solution space that benefit the smooth running of a business.
1. Mobile Wallets
To think it’s already been three years since Apple introduced their digital wallets feature, Apple Pay, for iPhones and their other products! In 2014, the computer giant was the only one offering the option of mobile online payments, but other companies of note like Google, Samsung, and Walmart soon followed suit the next year.
Mobile wallets are a significant upgrade in the payment solution space for several reasons. For one, mobile wallets offer another avenue for gathering vital customer analytics about shopping trends, giving business owners a better idea of how to enhance the retail experience. Mobile wallet payments are also much faster than cash transactions, speeding up the checkout process. With the means to effectively shape a more convenient and insightful shopping experience at a faster rate, mobile wallets are helping businesses promote more sales.
2. Mobile Point of Sale (MPOS) Devices
The future of payment solutions appears to be in making as many aspects of a transaction mobile. MPOS devices were very disruptive devices when they were first introduced, giving customers the ability to pay from their phone from practically anywhere within a store or restaurant. But now that customers expect businesses to accept card transactions, MPOS devices are becoming more of a necessity.
Business predictions based off the current strategies of Square, a popular U.S. credit card processing company who launched an MPOS product for retail, say that there will be 27.7 million MPOS devices in the U.S. by 2021. Large sellers who reach over $125,000 in annualized sales make up $5.25 billion (42%) of Square’s gross purchase volume as of the second quarter of 2016.
MPOS devices represent a major shift in how we view customer transactions. Digital currency is on the rise now more than ever and will continue to be status quo moving forward.
3. Payments Security
Of course, when anything is digitized there’s always a security risk involved regarding hackers and fraud. The U.S. has been particularly subject to heavy losses regarding digital payment solutions, with credit card fraud costing them a whopping $16 billion last year. At the advisement of well-known card networks like Visa and MasterCard, merchants have switched from magnetic stripe to EMV a.k.a. microchipped card transactions.
EMV technology has given card holders an extra security measure, but shifted fraud liability from card issuers to merchants since October 2015.
Understandably merchants weren’t initially keen on universally adopting EMV payment processing. Not only is there a learning curve to secure online payments, high-risk merchant accounts can face significantly higher rates for interchange and assessment fees. But there are ways for high-risk merchants to get reliable payment processing to grow their business now.
You might’ve heard the claim “all businesses are becoming digital” more frequently in recent years. The rapid evolution of the payment solution space lends massive credence to such claims. It’s time all merchants rode the winds of change to improve their growth.
