What can you do to make the payment process easier for your customers? The answer lies in variety. Consumers like to have choices. They’d much prefer to not have their payment options limited. Cash-only businesses, quite obviously, are very limiting. But even a store that chooses to accept debit cards, but not credit cards, is creating a major inconvenience for the majority of consumers.
As a merchant, your best bet is to allow your customers to choose from the myriad of payment options that are available to them. That means enabling them to use their credit cards, debit cards and gifts cards in addition to cash.
Accepting credit cards encourages impulse buys.
When customers are forced to pay with cash, they can only spend up to the amount of money they have on them. With credit cards, however, a customer can spend up to the amount of his/her credit limit. Credit card acceptance enables people to spend more in your store. That includes making impulse buys. Placing Visa and Mastercard logos at your front entrance and displaying products by the checkout usually equals a spike in sales!
“Not having enough cash on hand, or in their bank account, restricts customers from buying — if that’s the only method of payment you accept,” writes Katie Jensen on Chron.com, “If you accept credit card payments, instead of buying only the red sweater, they might buy both the red and blue sweater. Customers don’t have to worry about adding up their purchases in their head if they’re buying with cash or being embarrassed at checkout if they’re buying with a debit card and don’t have enough funds.”
Credit card acceptance helps consumers to better manage their money.
When a customer pays with a credit card, he/she doesn’t let go of any money immediately. Credit cards, in effect, offer their users mini-loans. The charge is placed on the customer’s account and he/she is then billed for it when the credit card’s cycle closes for the month. The customer then gets some time to pay the bill before any interest charges accrue. The extra time plus the bookkeeping aspect of this process helps savvy shoppers to better manage their money.
“People will spend more using credit cards since the pain of paying is further away, by at least a month or so,” notes Ron Lieber for The New York Times, “And credit card users who focus more on the features of the item they are shopping for instead of price are more likely to lean toward feature- (and cost-) laden goods. The mere appearance of a card logo in some of these experiments caused many test subjects to spend more.”
Credit card purchases come with added security.
If an item purchased with a credit card is damaged, lost or stolen, its user can contact the credit card company to take advantage of the insurances available on the account. The same item purchased with cash, however, is lost forever. Your acceptance of credit cards gives your customers better peace of mind.
As Jensen points out, credit card purchases allow customers to dispute charges if the products they purchased do not come as described. “They can dispute the charge and get their money back,” she affirms, “Accepting credit cards gives the appearance that your business is credible and well-established, an added layer of assurance for customers.”
With the Poynt Smart Terminal, the payment process has been made easier than ever! To learn all about it, please don’t hesitate to call Unity Payments at 1-800-661-3761 or email us at info@unitypayments.ca.
