How Can You Make It Easier For People To Pay You?

When you run a business, it’s crucial that you get paid by your customers on time. Failure to receive payments for products or services you’ve sold to them can severely disrupt your cash flow, and it’s a common reason why many firms go bust.

One of the common mistakes entrepreneurs make with their businesses is not ensuring it’s easy for their customers to pay them. If that sounds like an issue you’re experiencing with your company, the good news is that you can start making some improvements by considering the following inspirational ideas:

B2B Payment Optimization Services

The first thing to look at is B2B payment optimization services. It’s something that you’d usually associate with your accounts payable department, but you could request specific key accounts customers use them in their organizations for streamlined payments to you.

B2B payment optimization helps speed up payments and ensures invoices get approved in a controlled way. You could consider B2B payment optimization if you have a group of companies who often pay each other for specific products or services purchased internally.

Card Payment Facilities

There will be times when your customers don’t have cash available to purchase goods and services from you. If you’re a cash-only business, you risk alienating your firm from people that would prefer to pay for things in other ways, such as debit and credit cards.

You might not realize it, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money setting up card payment facilities for your business – especially if you’ve got a retail shopfront.

Opening up a card processing account is quick and straightforward with many online card processors, and you can usually buy card readers from them to use with smartphone apps – handy for payments in-store or on the go.

Credit Accounts

Another exciting way to make life easier for your customers and potentially invite a new market segment to buy from you is with credit account facilities.

In a nutshell, credit accounts allow your customers to get what they need from you right now without paying anything up-front.

As you can appreciate, it’s an excellent way to help your customers with their cash flow and makes the products and services you sell more affordable to them.

It makes sense to conduct credit checks on all applicants as you want to be sure that your credit account customers can afford to pay you back.

Check Payments

Despite the age of digital payments, many people still prefer to make payments to businesses and other individuals using checks. The trouble with check payments is that they can take a few days to process and clear.

However, some customers might be anti-technology and refuse to use other payment methods that have now become commonplace across the country and elsewhere in the world.

You likely won’t get many customers issuing check payments to your business. But, it’s worth offering the option to everyone and perhaps withhold sending products out or completing services until the check clears.

Cryptocurrency Payments

There’s no denying that cryptocurrency is the latest and greatest way to transfer money to other people and organizations. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin don’t rely on traditional banks to store, clear, and transfer money, as the whole operation is decentralized.

Many big names like Microsoft accept cryptocurrency payments, and it’s something you should consider doing for your business.

As you might know, there are many different cryptocurrencies on the market, so it might make sense to stick with the well-established ones like Bitcoin.

Digital Wallet Payments

The chances are high that you and most of your customers use digital wallet solutions like PayPal, Neteller, and Skrill to buy things online. Digital wallet payments make life easier as there is no need to increase fraud risks by entering card details on an online form.

What’s more, some digital wallet providers offer their customers debit cards linked to their accounts so they can use such a payment option in offline settings as well.

Instalment Options

Last but not least, another way to make your customers’ lives easier is by allowing them to spread the cost of their purchases with you.

For example, you could offer a lay-by service where they could make interest-free payments to you, and once they’ve paid the balance, the products they’ve purchased are then transferred to them.

You could also offer a similar option but allow them to start using the things they’ve bought immediately.