When was the last time you saw a person holding up a queue because they were searching for their loose change.
It barely happens anymore. Why? Because most people have moved towards cashless payment options like their cards or smartphones. The process is just so much simpler.
So what is causing this shift and should your business be moving towards a store environment that supports mobile payment systems and card payments?
1. Convenience
We all want more convenience in our lives. Increasingly, the world is becoming more fast paced, and it’s getting harder and harder to fit everything into a single day. That is why convenience to your average customer is so highly valued and shouldn’t be overlooked by businesses.
How does that tie into card and mobile payments?
If we take a look into the amount of ways cashless payments can be performed, it is no surprise that it has become the payment type of choice. There’s the card swipe, card tap, phone tap, online payment etc., all of which don’t require people to carry around notes and coins.
The fact that customers can now walk by a counter, quickly tap and leave with their order without breaking their stride (I may be slightly exaggerating here) just shows how far cashless payments have come.
2. Security
Customers want to keep their hard-earned money safe. That’s why many customers choose to carry less cash on them on a daily basis.
With cash, the only real line of security and tracking is the individual. They must monitor their cash, remember where it is and what they paid for. The line begins and ends with them, and if they accidentally misplaced that $5 dollar note, or it falls out of their pocket, that’s really where it ends.
However, cashless payment allows their money to have several barriers of security that always keeps it in line of sight. Bank providers have their security measures to protect people from card fraud by detecting unusual activity, and if this is indeed the case, the money can be securely locked away until given permission to unlock it. Cards can be easily replaced, and payment through mobile devices can be locked via pin, fingerprint or facial recognition. It isn’t hard to see why customers would feel more secure with cashless payments.
3. Avoiding Errors
Tell me if you’ve ever experienced this before.
You go to pay for your $20 meal and hand over a $50 note expecting to receive $30 in change. Instead the cashier accidentally gives you back $40, and you’ve effectively gotten your meal half price.
As a customer, you would be thinking it’s your lucky day. However, with your business owner hat on, this would be one of your biggest nightmares if it becomes a common occurrence. To put it in perspective, just losing $10 a day results in a loss of $3,650 across the span of a year. This is the potential risk you take when operating a cash-centric business model as cash handling will never be perfect.
Don’t get me wrong, errors can also occur with some manual cashless payment systems, however with an integrated Point of Sale systems, cashless payments won’t suffer from any manual error. Cashless payment systems directly integrated with your POS remove the need for manual input by automatically processing the bill total over to your payment terminal. This gives customers much more assurance that the transactions they are performing are faultless.
Conclusion
For the last couple of years, cashless payments has overtaken the mantle of most widely used means of payment and its growth doesn’t look like it will stop.
It is also helping to pave the way for mobile devices to be a one-stop-shop for all your payment needs, keeping the process more simple and secure than cash ever was.
As businesses strive to further improve their in-store experiences for their customers, some means of integrated cashless payment should be at the top of their list.