5 Things Small Businesses Don’t Know About Payment Processing

It isn’t hard in today’s fast-paced marketplace for small businesses to fall behind in terms of technology, especially when it comes to payment processing. The pressure to take on-site and mobile payments is creating a commerce environment where small businesses might not think it possible to compete. 

But it is possible for small businesses to offer the same convenient services offered by even the biggest competitors. Your small business does not have to be an automatic loser when it comes to competing for sales with bigger stores and retail chains. All the advantages you need to serve customers quickly with secure payment processing are available to small businesses too.

Competing with Big Business

The way to stay in business among big box merchants that make millions of transactions per day is to choose a payment processing system that fits your needs while enhancing your ability to accept payments from existing and potential customers.

Many times a small business owner simply doesn’t know the benefits of the more affordable payment processing now available to small businesses. Better payment processing can make a difference for your small business, and it pays to consider the range of benefits before you sit back and do nothing about losing sales to competitors who are already doing the things you can do today to improve your operations.

Here are 5 Things Most Small Businesses Don’t Know About Payment Processing.

1. Payment processing is fast, secure and easy to integrate for your business

The threshold and cost to integrate small business payment processing has been lowered while the bar for security and protection has been raised, making it easier than ever for you to integrate payment processing services customized to your small business.

2. Payment processing makes your small business more competitive

It’s true for any small business: An efficient payment processing system designed to be affordable and flexible really does help you compete for sales against the largest competitors in your industry, or the store down the block.

3. Mobile payment processing improves customer service

Customers will increasingly expect to make mobile payments at any business. Now you can offer that service and even use smartphones or other mobile devices to accept payments anywhere you want to secure a sale. It’s easy to set up and offers a significant “wow” factor when your customer service program includes point-of-purchase convenience along with inventory tracking and other customer service perks. Swipe credit cards securely by implementing PCI-compliant payment solutions.

4. Secure payment processing protects your customers and your business

With the right payment processing setup, even the smallest transactions are now encoded or encrypted to PCI-compliant standards to ensure that your customer data stays protected from hackers. No one wants to risk losing customer data, which could lead to lawsuits or other legal action. Secure payment processing greatly reduces this risk using tokenization to hide customer data behind a security wall.

5. You can accept secure e-commerce payments as well as on-site payments

Secure payment processing is available to small businesses that want to accept online transactions. The right payment processing option not only turns your website into a secure 24/7 asset for your business, but you can even sell web inventory on-site if you don’t have products in stock.

Payment processing has changed so much in the last three years that many small businesses may not be aware of all the advantages now available to them. These include low transaction fees now available to even the smallest operations.

USA Today reports that worldwide mobile payment transactions totaled $171.5 billion in 2012, a 6% increase from 2011. That figure is expected to reach $617 billion by 2016. Small businesses that respond to this trend stand to benefit from the convenience offered through mobile payment processing.

It is all possible while reducing the risk of credit card fraud as well. The benefits of PCI-compliant payment processing are so compelling it may make you take a look at the entire strategy of your small business to take advantage of new ways to make sales, collect fees or payments, and make customers happy to do business with you.