Taking Payments on your Mobile Phone

Allowing customers to pay with a credit or debit card can help you improve customer satisfaction, operational efficiency at the point of sale and may even lead to an increased average order value. While fixed point-of-sale terminals may require upfront investments in hardware, software and service contracts that aren’t feasible for your business, mobile payments can empower you to take customer payments using the cell phone you already own.

Here’s a closer look at what accepting payments on your cell phone entails and what terms to look for in a mobile payment provider:

Customer convenience

It’s estimated that by 2020, consumers will be more accustomed to paying on a mobile device than a desktop computer. Collecting customer payments on your cell phone demonstrates that you’re an innovative business that understands your customers’ lifestyles and their preferences. Incorporating mobile payments into your business’s payment processes also allows you to process customer payments at the exact moment customers want to buy, without requiring that they wait in a point-of-sale line, or invest more time into their visit at your store than they intend to.

Low fees

The fees you’ll pay to process mobile payments vary by provider and the transaction type. Fees may be slightly higher for “card not present” transactions, for example.However, many mobile payment providers offer a variety of plans that suit your business’s unique model and its expected card transaction volume.

Efficient electronic payments

Like fees, the amount of time a mobile payment provider requires in order to consider your credit and debit card sales “settled” varies, but many providers transfer the funds you’re owed from mobile sales (less applicable fees) electronically to your business bank account in no more than a few business days. This eliminates the need for you to deposit cash and checks at the bank, and can help make your cash flow processes more seamless.

Secure payment processing reduces your risk

There are some standard best practices associated with how sensitive customer payment data is to be handled by a business that comes into contact with it. For example, customer payment information should not be handwritten on paper and retained by any member of your team — even if payment-processing terminals are temporarily down, or the customer asks that you do so. When you have the support of a mobile payment provider that guarantees PCI-compliant processing, you gain the peace of mind that you can process customer payment transactions when, where and how the customer prefers — and always in a secure environment.