5 Ways to Make Online Payments Faster

Most of us these days make the majority of our payments online: whether this be paying our rent, bills, entertainment, or shopping for essentials. But there is nothing worse than when the payment process is lengthy and deposits and withdrawals become delayed. To combat this, many successful businesses are streamlining payments by implementing methods to make the process faster.

For companies, the main benefit of making online payments faster is to improve cash flow and retain their customer base. For customers, speedy payments are essential to their perception of, and experience with, a business. As an example, an online casino that is unable to make instant deposits and withdrawals will draw in far fewer visitors than a fast withdrawal casino, UK or offshore.

One way to make digital payments quicker is for businesses to accept multiple payment methods, such as cheques, e-cheques, credit and debit cards, cash, and mobile payments. This means that customers can choose the type of payment that is most convenient for them, as well as have a backup choice if needed. Over time, businesses will be able to analyse consumer behaviour and figure out the most-used and most-necessary methods.

Something that slows down, and even stops, a lot of payments online is having to create an account beforehand. A lot of people do not want to share private information, or create a new username and password, simply to make a purchase. It slows down the entire checkout experience, and will put a lot of people off. What a lot of e-commerce companies are doing to bypass this problem is allowing customers to make payments as guests, which means they can go straight through the payment process much faster.

In addition to creating a guest checkout, businesses should ensure that they are not asking potential consumers to spend too much time providing unnecessary information. Although useful from a business perspective, a customer doesn’t have to give their age range, buying preferences, and so on. It can make people suspicious that their details will be shared with third parties, and can make them lose interest in their purchases.

This next tip is not something that enough businesses utilise: offering incentives to clients who pay early. By encouraging customers to pay online before the due date of an invoice, not only will they get the services they have paid for sooner, but payments can be processed faster. The incentive could be a discounted offer, or an additional product for the same price.

Last, but definitely not least, is security. Making sure that all online payments can be instantaneously verified will make the process much faster, and reassures customers that a business can be trusted. Potential buyers will often drop out of a digital purchase over worries that the site is not secure and that their information may not be kept private. A quick and easy way to ensure security is by displaying a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate on a company website. This is important in all sectors, but nowhere more so than in online banking and other financial services where sensitive information may be at risk otherwise.