Four Reasons Why Businesses Need Diverse Payment Methods

The technology explosion has made it possible for ecommerce merchants, media companies, and small business all over the world to accept more payment methods than just cash and a few select credit cards, like Visa and Master Card. There’s PayPal, Venmo, Cash, not to mention Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and other contactless payment methods. There are debit cards, American Express, Discover, and JCB (Japan Credit Bank), not to mention WeChat Pay and AliPay.

Companies that want to do business around the world need to accept payments from around the world. Accepting diverse payment methods opens up new waves of customers who have different ways to share their money with you.

According to a recent article in Forbes, online merchants of all kinds need to be flexible and adaptable so they can accept alternative payment methods, at least anything other than a regular credit card. The benefits to a company are incalculable (although if we really wanted to calculate, look at your new revenue streams coming from something other than a regular credit card).

But if you need other reasons to understand why you should accept new alternate forms of payment, here are a few that the Forbes article mentioned:

• It reduces cart abandonment. The shopping cart abandonment rates are around 75.6% globally and 85.7% on mobile phones, but you can reduce your rate if you let customers choose how they want to pay. Imagine going through an entire online shopping experience only to find that the merchant doesn’t accept a preferred method of payment. You know what’s going to happen next, but you could prevent it if you just had additional payment methods. According to one survey, “8 percent of 1,799 respondents reported that they abandoned a shopping cart during checkout because there were not enough payment options.”
• Customers don’t trust banks. There are a high number of unbanked people in the U.S. (as much as 25% of all U.S. households) and around the world (2 billion people) who still have money to spend, but they rely on alternative forms of payment themselves. They use prepaid credit cards, PayPal and Venmo (and their debit cards), or other cash transfer apps.
• Other countries don’t use regular credit cards as often. AliChat and WePay have a total of 800 million users around the world, with a daily cross-border transaction amount between 500 – 600 million Yuan. There’s also Brazil’s Boleto Bancário, which is as much as 25% of the country’s total payments, making up 3.7 billion transactions per year.
• It increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. If you let customers pay the way they want to pay, they’re going to be happy. If they’re happy, they’re going to come back. And if they keep coming back, they’re going to be loyal to you, because you let them pay the way that’s easiest and most convenient for them.

Credit cards, debit cards, money transfer apps, and even international payment methods — Corepay can help you accept many different methods of payment, without a lot of jumping through hoops. To learn more, just visit our website or call us at (800) 408-0095.

Photo credit: HLundgaard (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 3.0)