Wondering About the Latest Trends in Merchant Services? Here’s What You Need to Know
Merchant payment processing is an ever-changing world of solutions. As a business owner, keeping up with the new technology in payment platform solutions is a must in today’s touch-free world.
Only installing the latest solutions to meet the needs of the current business world isn’t enough. Preparing for the next wave of merchant payment solutions is also vital to your business’ success.
The days are flying by, and with 2021 coming to an end, it’s time to learn about emerging merchant services in 2022. Knowing about these advancements will help you make better decisions. It will also help you in understanding how you can use merchant payment solutions to keep up-to-date with the latest trends.
What Are the Latest Trends in Merchant Payment Processing?
We have quite a few trending technologies when it comes to merchant services. Some are already at work in active markets, while others are in the initial stage of launch.
Ranging from mobile transactions to contactless payments, and from digital on-boarding to data analysis, functionalities exist across various segments.
Overall, the payment platform solutions of tomorrow promise something more substantial. Learning about the following trends is crucial for your business. This research is especially helpful if you are expecting to branch out into innovative merchant payment solutions by next year.
Below are the top 5 trends you should look out for when transitioning into 2022 and beyond.
Mobile or Tap Payments for Convenient Transactions
With ubiquitous solutions such as PayPal, Venmo, and now Cash App, mobile payments are no longer a mere concept. They have actively transformed into primary solutions for mobile banking. So far, these payment platform solutions are more prevalent in peer-to-peer transfers versus point of sale (POS) purchases.
Traditional bank transfers are complex in comparison to Venmo transfers. Everyone seems to prefer these mobile payment methods.
Keeping this in mind, it seems only natural for businesses to flock to merchant payment solutions in mobile. Every company can’t have its own PayPal or Venmo. However, a tailored approach to mobile payments is already here with a slight modification.
Solutions such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are already making it possible for businesses to accept mobile payments via POS. Most merchant payment processing solutions are looking to support this method as a standard option soon. This is all in the name of customer convenience and providing them with easier payment solutions.
By using these services, customers can pay through a digital version of their credit card. When they are at a POS, they no longer need to take out their cards. They have to “tap” their phone against a POS terminal, and the payment goes through after authorization.
Further, it’s no secret that convenience is the name of the game in merchant services. Keeping this in mind, we can predict that those who use iOS or Android devices will soon switch towards using this method primarily.
Not having this solution onboard is understandable. Although, if your merchant services vendor doesn’t already offer this technology, you should ask them about their plans to make it available. Your business should have this in place well before it becomes standard practice.
Adding an eCommerce Store to Your Business
With the onset of the coronavirus causing consumers to change the way they shop, adding an eCommerce store to your business is a necessity for revenue maintenance and continued growth. 79% of consumers shop online to find the best prices. Others do so due to the convenience of being able to purchase a product or service from anywhere and at any time. So how does adding an eCommerce store or Online Shopping Cart benefit your business?
For traditional brick-and-mortar stores, an online store adds a new stream of revenue that extends far beyond your local customer base. Your products and services come to your customer, not the other way around. Being able to expand your reach to potential customers who aren’t able to visit your business location has a proven increase in revenue generation of at least 28%. With contactless payments continuing to rise, eCommerce sales reached $4.2 Trillion by the end of 2020.
Today, eCommerce platforms can sync with your in-store inventory management system. Stax allows you to create an eCommerce shopping cart to sell your products online with just one click, no configuration, or technical skills needed. You can easily add items to the catalog, select those items, and automatically create an online shopping cart where customers can go to purchase products instantly.
Implementing Contactless Payment Solutions
More than 51% of American’s are currently using contactless payments. In the last few months of 2020, credit card issuers like Visa and Mastercard noticed a massive increase in tap-to-pay transactions. Besides the fact that contactless payments process much faster than traditional payments, businesses that offer more than one payment method often see an influx of revenue.
Your business may already have the capability to accept contactless payments. The technology behind tapping a card with a mobile payment service such as Apple Pay and Google Pay is interchangeable. Adding the Virtual Terminal with contactless payment tools is an affordable solution that allows your business to easily adapt to a contact-free environment.
Contactless Payment Options:
Contactless Terminals – A contactless terminal is a card machine that accepts various types of contactless payments, including credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Google Pay, Fitbit Pay, and other devices that use near-field communication (NFC) or radio-frequency identification (RFID).
Text2Pay Invoices – With the Text2Pay feature in the Stax Platform, you can send an invoice to your customer via SMS text, making it extremely convenient to be paid. By sending an invoice over text, your customer is more likely to see it right away. Plus, if they store credit card information on their phone, they can pay you in just a few taps.
Digital Invoicing via Virtual Terminal – With Digital Invoicing you can send an electronic invoice to your customer to be paid via email or SMS text message. With the use of a virtual terminal, you can configure automatic payment reminders and set recurring digital invoices for monthly services.
Digital On-boarding to Understand Customer Needs
According to research by Deloitte, digital on-boarding is another trend that is all set to rise in merchant payment solutions.
The process is simple. Integrated merchant services have already become a norm in the industry. When payments go through these payment platform solutions, it does more than represent a series of numbers. These payments go directly on record for your financial books. It assesses the efficiency of your processing system. And it defines the customer’s data within your customer relationship management (CRM) application.
That’s mostly what the digital onboarding process looks like today.
Today, with each transaction, your merchant payment processing records customers’ behavior towards your business. The products they buy, the amount they spend, and the frequency they shop at all matter in understanding what your customers want from you.
Digital onboarding systems are already available for your use.
These systems come in the form of integrated merchant payment solutions. They are simple to set up, easy to use, and are useful in refining your business processes.
Through these integrated merchant services, your digital onboarding shifts away from manual processes. Everything happens behind the scenes, without any need for you to fill out survey forms from customers or do the redundant data entry yourself.
The data that is captured ethically through business onboarding can be used in a variety of ways. For one, you can assess this data in a big-picture format. This helps you come up with new products and refine your processes. But that’s not all that it does.
Your business can also use the data to devise marketing campaigns and reach out to customers in a way that seems natural. Further, with targeted marketing and engagement campaigns, your payment platform solutions can serve more than their primary function.
The trend is already in full force. It is bound to grow further as ethical data usage remains a top talking point into the next year in a post-Cambridge Analytica world. If you are not using an integrated merchant payment processing solution, this is high time to start looking for one.
Data Collection for Rewards and Personalization Programs
This concept correlates to the digital onboarding feature above. It also explains precisely why onboarding is becoming such a hot trend for merchant payment solutions.
As the explanation above defines, digital onboarding focuses on ethical data gathering. You can then use this data in several ways. But a significant focus on this data’s usage is to increase your customer engagement. Asking your customers the right questions, understanding their needs, and offering a brand experience is all a part of this goal.
This way, your payment platform solutions become more useful than a new cash register. They work as a dependable system to increase your customer engagement.
A very effective way to increase customer engagement is through reward programs. It is a longstanding trend that never really gets old. But since the past few years, customers are now more focused on personal experience than some random discounts.
Remember to have a mix of both reward programs and customer experience practices in place. Simply put, this combination can encourage your target audience to interact more with your business. But you can’t design effective reward programs or brand experiences without knowing what your customers want.
That’s where the trend of using integrated merchant services comes in.
By using a mix of digital onboarding and data analysis, you can gather useful details through your payment platform solutions. From there, you can analyze the information to see what interests your customers the most.
Some factors you can quickly analyze include but are not limited to:
- Learning about products they often buy together.
- Knowing about what products sell the most during a particular season.
- Differentiating between demographics to learn what appeals the most to a specific group.
Remember to design an effective loyalty program and brand experience for your customers by looking at similar data. Your integrated merchant payment solutions perform most of the work here. Due to this, your customers will usually not mind sharing necessary details about their views on your company.
Following this trend to design reward programs and brand experience might sound tricky to you. It is not easy. But with the right merchant services, it doesn’t feel as grueling. In fact, it can easily result in quite a beneficial approach for your business.
Once again, it all depends on the provider for your merchant payment processing. They must offer the right capabilities and allow you to capture and streamline data with other applications.
Prepare for the future by having the services of a modern payment platform solutions provider.
Remember to focus on long-term growth for your business by staying up to date on emerging trends.
Stax levels the playing field for businesses to achieve greater success. This means paying the utmost attention to new trends and technologies to make the most out of modern payment solutions.
