How switching up your payments systems can help grow your business.
You don’t have to be a fintech or a financial institution for a next-generation payments programme to have a transformational effect on your bottom line. Here are four example scenarios to show just how smarter payments can unlock business growth in different ways for different sectors.
You’re an online retailer that needs to sell more big ticket items.
Source: Juniper Research
You’re a premium furniture shop which operates mostly online. Luxury furniture is expensive, which can be prohibitive for a lot of customers. They love browsing, but when they see the price tag, many decide to buy elsewhere.
Despite the desirability of your designs, sales are slow – but with high overheads, dropping prices isn’t an option. So, you need to find another way of converting more interest into sales.
Embedding a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solution onto your product page allows customers to spread the cost of their new bed, sofa or dining table. They can buy the premium furniture they want without blowing their entire monthly budget on one item.
The BNPL function is easy to integrate onto your website or app, without disrupting your operations. The provider takes on the full fraud and credit risk, so you don’t have to worry about losing money. And you have full control over how your customers pay for their items, whether that’s in instalments or over a certain number of days.
Offering flexible ways to pay helps you attract and retain more customers, including many who might have otherwise concluded they couldn’t afford your products. Rather than clicking away when they see the prices, they’re now more likely to make a purchase, and pay for it seamlessly over a number of instalments.
You’re a supermarket brand competing to retain more of its customers.
Sources: Deloitte and Temenos
You’re a longstanding supermarket chain that’s losing customers to newer, slicker online stores. You want to keep – and grow – your customer base by improving their digital experience and giving them more reasons to shop with you. But you can’t afford to wait for a slow-moving digital overhaul of your website: you need to act fast.
The first step is to make online payment effortless, to prevent your customers getting frustrated at the checkout stage. Adding an embedded finance system allows your customers to pay via e-wallet at the touch of a button, so the shopping experience becomes smoother and faster. It’s easy to implement and means you can avoid building complex and expensive banking services in-house. You can read more about the benefits of embedded finance in our recent industry guide.
Another way to boost customer loyalty and retention is to set up a rewards programme. Your customers can enjoy personalised offers, earn points, and shop exclusive sales, all from within a dedicated app. Launching a physical card offers an extra way for them to pay and rack up loyalty points. Your issuer processing partner will manage the cards and payments, so you can focus on taking care of your customers.
A smoother payment process with fewer steps improves your customers’ overall experience. They can shop online on the go, without having to laboriously enter their card details every time, making them more likely to complete their payments and keep coming back. An appealing loyalty programme also incentivises customers to spend more and stay loyal to your business.
Both digital wallets and loyalty programmes give you access to deeper insights about your customers. Data about their spending preferences and purchase behaviours can inform better decision making, more effective marketing, and also enable you to offer a more personalised and richer shopping experience.
You’re a travel agency looking to make payments borderless
Source: Allied Market Research.
You’re an international travel agency which attracts customers (corporate and luxury consumer) who travel all over the world. They want to cross borders seamlessly, without having to pay FX charges or take out wads of cash in different currencies. Competitors are offering easier and cheaper overseas spending to these travellers, so you need to adapt your business to be able to keep up.
Improve your customers’ travelling experience by offering them a virtual or physical Multi-FX card.
This will allow them to hold multiple balances of multiple currencies in a single account, which they can manage easily from their phones without incurring any extra charges. This is particularly useful for businesses who may need to manage multiple people’s cashflow at once as their employees travel around the world.
Customers can load funds onto their account in one currency and pay in another. They can even wait for a preferable exchange rate before loading funds onto a currency’s designated wallet.
Travelling can be stressful, so offering your customers unparalleled payment convenience is a guaranteed way to keep them coming back when they next go abroad.
Multi-FX cards don’t just make payment easier for your customers: they allow you to offer the best possible point-of-sale FX rates in real time. You can set limits to make sure your customers don’t overspend, and no hidden fees keep things transparent for everyone, helping your business stay competitive.
You’re an events company trying to win back hours lost to expenses.
Source: LLR Partners
You’re a thriving B2B events company with over a hundred employees; laying on corporate parties, hosting high-profile exhibitions and organising industry dinners all around the country. But it’s a business with many overheads and lots of moving parts. Each employee has to enter their requests manually, using up hours of company time; and often waiting until they have a large amount to recoup before submitting requests, which can impact the business’s cash flow.
Help save time and effort with a smart expense management system. Simply issue your own cards, which employees can then use for any work expenses – and which you can monitor, authorise or decline in real time. You’ll also get clear insights into how much they’re spending and on what, to help you make smarter choices in the future.
Dedicated cards allow your employees to submit their expenses in moments. They no longer have to enter their requests manually, and worry about inputting wrong numbers or losing receipts. They can save hours of time on admin, which can be put to better use to help your business grow. Oversight of what they’re spending means you can advise on how best to allocate your budgets and streamline your spending.
When it comes to growing your business, standing still means being left behind. Overhauling your payments processes can be the key to unlocking a wealth of knotty industry-specific business problems. But, whatever sector you’re in, payments innovation will help you keep pace with your customers’ rapidly changing expectations, boost their experience, and give you an edge over your competitors. Get in touch today to see how we can help take your payments – and your business – to the next level.
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