Get Paid As Quick As A Flash!
One of the major causes of cash flow stress in a business are your customers’ taking too long to pay you (or not paying you at all). Many a business has been forced to shut its doors due to this problem. If you want your customers to pay you quickly you need to make it very easy for them to pay you. A good way to do this is by making use of payment gateways.
Payment gateways allow small businesses to take payments online and on mobile devices with debit cards and credit cards. If you do business on the move, you can set up a payment gateway on your phone or on a mobile card reader and get paid on the spot. This does not require you to have a merchant facility with a bank, which saves a lot of money on expensive bank merchant fees.
Just a few of the many payment gateways available include:
EziDebit | PayPal | Stripe | Square
Payment gateways can be integrated with your accounting software. This means that you can invoice your clients and include a “pay it now” button on the invoice for them to click as soon as they receive it. Payments can then be automatically allocated against outstanding invoices.
With the right payment gateway, integrated properly with your business management tools, you can save time, save money and get paid faster.
Which payment gateway is right for you? This will depend on your business and your customer base. If you have a lot of international clients online, your needs will be different than if you mow lawns or fix plumbing. It’s worth doing your homework, because the right gateway will save you time and money.
An electrician was struggling to get customers to pay him on time and he was spending a lot of time chasing payments. Since implementing Square in his business he has been able to take payments on the spot from his customers as soon as the job was finished. It only required the customer to tap their card against the Square Reader for payment to be received. The only tools required for this was an app on his phone and a Square Reader (cost $19.00) that attaches to the phone. This saved him a lot of time and stress in chasing payments from his customers.
Do you make use of a payment gateway in your business? Has it made a significant impact on your cash flow due to the ease of receiving customer payments?
I would love to hear your comments.