Growing your small business doesn't necessarily mean changing your inventory or marketing strategy. It can be as simple as making payments more convenient. Supermarkets and some big chain stores have been accepting mobile payments for a while, which improves checkout speed and ease of purchase. Now, small businesses are rapidly getting in on the act. With millions of customers now using mobile payments to make purchases, adding this option is essential to keeping your business competitive.
Wh customers use mobile paymentss
Mobile payments are payments by credit card or online wallets to pay for goods or services. Customers can load their credit and debit cards into the mobile app, allowing them to make purchases with their phone, which, more often than not, they carry with them. The benefits of mobile payments are that they're safe, simple, and hassle-free.
Companies of all sizes are increasingly accepting mobile payments, which allow for transactions to be made no matter where the customer or business may be. Many companies report that customers rate ease of payment as the main reason for making repeat purchases. Mobile payments can be made locally and internationally.
NFC mobile payments
One of the most popular ways customers pay is by using a smartphone with near-field communication (NFC), which requires the customer to download an app and a business to purchase a point-of-service terminal. Point-of-service terminals or readers are not expensive and are available from companies such as Google, Square, Apple, and Samsung, to name a few.
Powered by radio waves from a process called radio-frequency identification (RFID), NFC mobile payments work by allowing wireless communication between the customer's smartphone and the point-of-service terminal. RFID has been used for many years in scanning products and sending packages.
A type of RFID, NFC requires the customer's smartphone to come within two inches of a terminal to process payment. There's nothing to swipe or touch and the transaction is processed almost immediately.
The success of mobile payments
Most businesses in capitalist economies will be on board with NFC mobile payments after 2020, so it's a good idea to start thinking of changing over now. Statistics show that hundreds of millions of customers are using NFC payments as of 2019.
Part of this success has to do with the security of the technology. Once customers and business owners learned that transactions are encrypted and that credit or debit card numbers aren't visible, they viewed NFC as even safer than using actual credit cards.
Using mobile payments is a savvy way to grow your business by attracting customers who want ease of payment. If you have a small company, it's a good idea to get acquainted with mobile payments and NFC now so that you'll be on board when the technology becomes standard—and that time is right around the corner.
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