When you started your small business, you were concerned with marketing, raising or borrowing funds, providing a consistently excellent product or service, and finding a place to house your business. You probably weren’t thinking about how you ought to do your taxes, how to keep track of income, or the best way to manage your expenses and accept payment from customers.
If you hadn’t thought of this beforehand, you were certainly thinking of it the first time a customer asked to pay with a credit card or with Bitcoin. The truth is that if paying for something requires extra steps from your customers, you might lose them. There are several ways you should be prepared to accept payment from customers before opening your store.
Credit cards
Accepting credit cards is probably the most important thing that you, as a business owner, can do to make sure that your customers can purchase your products. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar setup or are online only there are multiple options for accepting credit card payments.
Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are growing in popularity. 2.3 million users make payments via Bitcoin, and offering this to your customers as a payment option might make you stand out from the crowd of your competition. It’s not difficult to set up a Bitcoin Wallet account for buying, selling, or storing Bitcoin, and it doesn’t cost anything.
PayPal
PayPal has been offering business payments for a long time. It’s affordable and takes only a few minutes to set up. Much like a credit card transaction, there is a processing fee. The widespread use of PayPal by customers makes it easy for them to buy from you. Customers are more likely to purchase items in their virtual shopping cart when they have access to PayPal at check out, and that’s a pretty compelling reason to start using it if you haven’t already.
Cash
People aren’t carrying cash around as much as they used to, but if you have a brick-and-mortar store you should still be prepared to accept it. Have change available and accounting practices that make it easy to track what comes in and goes out.
Check
While many customers may prefer to use a credit or debit card, a huge number of transactions are still completed via paper checks. Checks have no processing fees, resulting in higher profit margins for you as a business owner. There is also technology available that allows you to remote deposit capture checks, allowing the funds to be immediately available in your account without making a trip to the bank.
One of the first rules of business is to give customers what they want. The service or products you provide are one way of giving them what they want, but allowing them to pay how they want to is another way to serve your customers. Having multiple payment options available and ready for your customers allows you to be flexible and to say yes to your customers more often, which may end up netting you more sales in the long run.
