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Digital payments encompass a range of solutions that enable online payments through various digital channels. l In today’s society, digital payments are becoming more and more popular among customers. TechRadar reports that the global digital payments industry is now worth USD 4.7 trillion, and that over 6 billion people will become dependent on digital payments by 2023. Moreover, according to data from Statista, the transaction value of digital payments done in the Philippines will hit the USD $10 million mark this year. This accounts for almost 40 million Filipino customers who will use payment cards, e-wallets, online banking, and POS cashless transactions for their purchases.
Indeed, it counts for a lot when a business offers digital payment choices to its customers, as opposed to a pure pay-with-cash only option. Many customers now actively look for cashless payment options, and they will likely patronize a business over its competitors if that said business offers digital payments while the others don’t. Luckily, the Philippines’ cashless and digital payment environment is more capable than ever before when it comes to meeting the demands of the digital economy. Fintech companies like Maya, for example, now offer a number of convenient, reliable, and effective solutions to manage digital payments. Knowing this, an entrepreneur should definitely implement a digital payment system and use it to their advantage. Leveraging digital payment solutions will likely transform any business into a profitable, up-to-date, and highly competitive enterprise.
If you’re an entrepreneur who’s considering upgrading to cashless and digital payments, we’re here to help. This article will walk you through the benefits of setting a digital payment system and will provide some tips on how to implement one of your own.
Let’s start with the good that a digital payment system will do for your business. More organizations are upgrading their payment systems to include cashless and digital payments, and these are the reasons why.
Business owners are discovering for themselves that a payment system that incorporates cashless and digital payment solutions is better than a cash-reliant one. With the latter, there’s a lot of room for delay and human error to occur. In a physical store, for example, the business’s staff may expend a lot of time and effort just counting bills and coins for distribution to customers. Even then, they may not always get the right amount in and out of the cash register. There’s also room for mistakes in a pure cash-on-delivery model for ecommerce businesses. Whoever’s in charge of picking up the customers’ money may not always double-check if they’re getting the right amount.
But whether a digital payment system is implemented for a business’s physical store, online store, or both, it is certain to improve the overall quality of transactions. After all, it incorporates no-nonsense payment options that customers can use immediately to initiate and complete transactions. A digital payment system can also help you oversee large-scale payments, like those from business-to-business (B2B) engagements, with the same ease as transactions from single customers. As an entrepreneur, you will definitely want to invest in digital payments that can streamline your transactions like this.
It Makes Purchasing from Your Store Easier for Customers
Many Filipino customers can be classified as omni-commerce shoppers. That means that they like the choice of shopping at both physical and virtual stores. They also like the range of payment methods that come with this variety. They’re assured they can choose the most convenient method—and that they don’t have to bend over backwards just to pay for their favorite products.
Having the choice to pay offline, online, through an app, through a POS gateway, or through some other payment method will motivate customers to buy from your business again and again. As such, you as the business owner should leverage digital payments across multiple sales channels to ensure convenience for your customers and to create a totally frictionless shopping experience for them.. This will make it much easier for them to purchase your products, and it will also create more opportunities for you to make money.
Sales isn’t the only financial aspect that a digital payment system will improve for your business. You’ll also find that having a digital payment system will gain you cost savings from increased business efficiency.
Data analytics tools that are integrated into the digital payment solutions you rely on will help you gain a bird’s eye view of the state of your business’s sales, inventory, and cash flow in real-time. This is what you can refer to in order to make more responsive, efficient, and profitable decisions for your business.
There’s also less leeway for theft to happen in your company if there’s a formal digital payments system in place. It will leave little room for either petty theft or larger-scale corruption, which usually involve the pilferage of physical cash. Online transaction records, digital banking data, automatically generated invoices and receipts, and other such digital footprints will help keep everyone extra accountable and aware of where the money’s going.
Digital payment systems can also be designed to deal with problems like fraud and identity theft. You can worry less about potential fraudsters disrupting your business, knowing that the digital solutions you rely on use tools to protect your business and your customers.
Digital payment systems also help entrepreneurs establish good financial housekeeping practices. It’ll be much easier for you to track and compile your financial records when you keep them in an accurate, streamlined, and error-proof system. These will definitely come in handy if you need these records to apply for financing, for instance, a business loan.
Your digital payment system can ascribe exact numbers to prove your creditworthiness. You’ll be grateful to have a handle on these when it’s time to apply for a loan or additional lines of credit.
A digital payment system also does good things for the business’s reputation. Customers see a business that’s willing to upgrade to modern payment technologies as trustworthy, up-to-the-times, and considerate of their needs.
Now that no-touch cashless payments are becoming the trend for health-related purposes as well as convenience, it’s time for your business to innovate. This will bring willing new customers to your doorstep and will ensure that your old customers will continue to support you.
The modern business is the kind that can function from multiple fronts. Alongside a physical store, the business can also operate a dedicated ecommerce website or a mobile app. If you want to scale up your business to include these avenues, the first thing you should do is enroll in a digital payment system.
Thankfully, doing so won’t be very difficult. Setup costs vary per solution, but the pricing schemes offered by Maya are both simple and flexible. It’s just a matter of making the call and seeing which digital payment solution is best adapted for your business, then you’ll be set to go!
Below are some more specific tips about setting up a digital payment system for your business. These will help you choose the right digital payment solutions for your enterprise.
If you run your business from a brick-and-mortar store, consider getting a device like Maya ONE for point-of-sale cashless payments. There are two big advantages of an all-around device like this one. The first is that it can accommodate a great variety of payment methods, from credit cards and debit cards to virtual prepaid cards and e-wallets. The second is that the device can facilitate digital payments with speed and accuracy.
Your customers can simply tap, swipe, or dip their cards in the terminal to complete their payments. They can also pay you with digital currency from their e-wallets, or use your business’s Maya QR code to initiate the transaction. This experience could be even faster and more efficient than them pulling out their physical wallets from their pockets or bags. Your staff at the checkout counter will also be pleased by its straightforward interface and controls. It will help them to do their job of facilitating customer payments to the very best of their ability.
If you sell on a website—or if you operate your business exclusively from an ecommerce platform—you’ll need a good system for digital payments. In ecommerce, payment is one of the most important parts of the overall customer experience. If a customer encounters problems during their checkout, they may never buy from your online store again.
You can prevent this from happening by adding a reliable checkout plugin to your ecommerce website. One such example is Maya Checkout, which can be added to both websites and mobile apps. Maya’s Checkout plugin integrates seamlessly with the most popular ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. The plugin will enable your site to accept a number of cashless payments, which will enhance the quality of your customers’ checkout.
What if you don’t have a business website just yet? Will it still be possible to implement a digital payments system to bill your customers? With a solution like Maya Digital Invoice, the answer is yes. Maya Digital Invoice allows you to send virtual invoices to your customers via email. They’ll receive details of their purchase and a link that will allow them to pay using the messaging app of their choice.
Using a digital invoice system like Maya’s will improve your billing process. You’ll be able to accept money from your customers from several sources, even if you don’t have a website. The digital invoice also makes it incredibly convenient for your customers to pay on the spot. That means that you can be paid faster for your products and services, and you won’t have to sweat as much about your current cashflow.
Implementing a digital payment system isn’t the only thing you have to do in order to improve the purchasing experience of your customer, however. Along with enabling more payment choices, you must also streamline the number of steps it takes to complete a purchase. If the purchasing process is too convoluted, or if it takes too many steps, your customers may still abandon their shopping carts.
Pair your new digital payment solutions with a new and improved checkout process. Make it so that there are fewer steps, fewer detours to other webpages, or fewer trips to be made to complete the transaction. Ask only for essential information from your customers, and revisit your checkout process to make sure there are no steps that are redundant. This will have a bearing on your ability to secure the loyalty of your customer base.
Some of your customers from the older generations, or customers who are less “techie,” may be wary about making cashless payments at first. After all, for a long time, cash was assumed to be the most secure way to make payments. These customers may be worried about their card data or banking info being leaked to malicious agents, or about their money just disappearing into an imagined void. To receive payments from these customers, you will need to prove that there’s little risk of this happening.
You can reassure your customers of safe, secure, and private purchasing experiences, round-the-clock, when they use Maya digital payment solution. Maya ONE, Maya Checkout, and Maya Digital Invoice all follow the Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). You will be able to say with confidence that their data is in safe hands as these solutions abide by the most stringent of global standards.
One last thing you should remember about implementing a digital payment system is that the solutions you’ll end up using will not be 100% free from hiccups. You may experience issues with your technical integration or your customers may experience downtime. When these things happen, you will need a reliable support team to help you troubleshoot the issues and assist your customers.
Along with its digital payment products, Maya can promise the support of an excellent customer care team. Our staff will be able to entertain questions about any of our solutions on a 24/7 basis. As Maya’s client, you’ll receive all the technical support you need to get your digital payment system running smoothly. Our people will help you deliver the purchasing experience your customers deserve.
Now that digital payments are becoming the new normal, it’s up to your business to adapt. You’ll be able to build a great digital payment system using Maya solutions, which have already helped numerous businesses upgrade and streamline their payment processes. Contact Maya today to find a digital payment solution that’s perfect for your business needs.
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Maya is powered by the country's only end-to-end digital payments company Maya Philippines, Inc. and Maya Bank, Inc. for digital banking services. Maya Philippines, Inc. and Maya Bank, Inc. are regulated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
www.bsp.gov.ph
