Making mobile payments at a small business.

Mobile payment technology has steadily gained immense popularity from businesses and customers looking for a convenient way of making and receiving payments. While there are several forms of mobile payments, the term “mobile payments” refers to transactions done from mobile devices. This payment allows businesses to receive payments from apps, such as Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, which customers download on their smartphones.

While some businesses use these payment methods already, others are still at crossroads, debating if they should consider them or not. Well, below are some insights that can guide your decision.

The Benefits of Mobile Payments

1. Unmatched Convenience

Did you know more than 50% of customers don’t carry cash every day, and if they do, they carry less than $20? This is a small amount that can’t make significant purchases. Even though some may prefer to make payments for large purchases using credit cards, customers may easily forget their wallets containing their credit cards at home. And, while many people forget their wallets regularly, you hardly hear of anyone who has forgotten their smartphone.

Smartphones are practically attached to everyone’s hands. Mobile payments allow customers to easily pay for their goods and services. Easy payment options also help breed customer loyalty. That aside, you can equip your sales teams with this payment technology. This means customers can pay for their goods anywhere in the store instead of having to queue.

2. Tracking Trends

Tracking trends is important as it helps businesses identify customer trends, especially the highest purchases and customer spending patterns. Mobile payments make it easy for businesses to analyze such customer data and identify trends. This information can then help tailor sales and marketing promotions. Tracking customer data also enables businesses to craft customized product and service recommendations based on customer’s previous purchases.

3. Cost Saving

The 2011 Federal Government policies on credit and debit card transactions interchange fees capped the processing fees for purchases made with a debit card but didn’t restrict credit card processing charges. Therefore, businesses that accept credit cards can now save money by onboarding mobile payments.

Several mobile payment options charge much lower transaction fees compared to some credit card providers. Others offer a discounted fee for a specified amount of credit card purchases monthly. Even if mobile payment technology is only saving you a few cents, it can add up to significant amounts throughout the year.

4. Better Security

Cyberattacks are a real threat to businesses and customers using digital payments. A compromised point-of-sale payment system can have disastrous financial effects on a business. However, mobile payments alleviate some security concerns. For instance, instead of keeping your customers’ debit or credit card numbers, mobile payment technology uses tokenization, which secures this information.

Risks of Mobile Payment Technology

While mobile payments are beneficial, you should be wary of the following risks;

Security Breaches

While mobile payments provide enhanced security, they are also a security threat just like any other transaction that depends on internet service. As mentioned, these payments use tokenization to encrypt customer data. However, businesses should ensure that they use the latest encryption technology to protect the business and customers from data theft.

Different Customer Expectations

While mobile payment technology is overly convenient, it only really appeals to a young audience. Therefore, it may not be convenient for an older audience that is less tech-savvy. You should assess your customer demographic data before implementing this payment technology.

Bottom Line

Integrating mobile payment technology into your business can position you ahead of competitors and help boost sales. However, getting started can be quite costly, as you will need to update your POS systems to accommodate this technology. Therefore, conduct a cost-benefit analysis and weigh its pros and cons to determine if your business gains from this technology.


Looking for help? Tired and believing there has got to be a better way?

Let's talk about your business. With over a decade of experience leading companies and transforming lives, and a Master's degree in Org. Development and Leadership, Mike can help you find the best way forward!

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Mike Gingerich life leadership business coaching

Hip guy using a mobile app for business.

Most people rely on smartphones in their daily lives. From communicating and networking to managing their finances and purchasing products, mobile devices have become a must-have. This is an indication of how important developing a mobile app for your business can be. Apps are not only your client’s access portal to your business but also help boost brand awareness and develop a loyal audience.

Depending on its features, mobile apps can help foster customer interaction, enable customers to make easy purchases, and offer direct communication. Due to these benefits, approximately 42% of small businesses already have mobile apps, while 30% have plans to build one. However, you should consider several factors before developing an app for your business.

What to Consider When Investing in a Mobile App

Business owners should analyze the following when investing in a mobile app;

The growth in mobile app use became clear in 2020, thanks to the COVID pandemic. However, this trend is poised to continue. Below are mobile app trends to consider going forward.

1. Enterprise Mobile Management (EMM)

EMM helps in streamlining mobile computing processes in a business. This platform enables businesses to authorize mobile devices used by employees on the company network securely. This strengthens your business’ security and improves staff productivity.

2. Beacon Technology

Beacon tech is another significant mobile app trend that has been adopted by several industries. This incredible location and proximity technology helps with marketing. Beacon uses wireless transmitters and Bluetooth technology to transmit signals.

3. 5G Technology

With incredible speeds, 5G technology is faster than 4G and any other mobile technology. Smartphone companies such as Verizon and Samsung have already launched dedicated 5G chips. LG also has plans of fusing 5G services into its gadgets. With this, developers of mobile applications should take advantage of the fast network speeds to improve app performance.

4. Wearable Devices

The increasing popularity of wearable devices, such as fitness bands and smartwatches, is another trend that will continue to boost mobile app growth. Surprisingly, even after bringing in more than $33 billion in revenue the previous year, most mobile apps cannot integrate with wearable devices. As such, mobile app developers should focus on including integration options for wearable devices.

5. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence has led to significant breakthroughs in the development of mobile apps. AI has made apps smarter and is saving app developers significant amounts of effort, time, and money. Artificial intelligence works well with machine learning. Integrating machine learning with artificial intelligence gives mobile apps analytical abilities that work with user behavior. For instance, eCommerce apps can leverage this to make personalized recommendations to their customers.

6. Blockchain

Blockchain technology is universally applicable, as it also influences mobile app development. While its integration may be slow compared to other mobile app technologies, most businesses have integrated this for financial transactions.

Mobile Apps are the Future

Without a doubt, mobile app growth is a trend that will continue. Furthermore, the introduction of mobile apps has reshaped how industries and businesses conduct businesses. However, as with any dynamic technology, businesses should keep informed about the latest mobile app trends to compete with others in the market. By using mobile apps, businesses can enjoy many benefits. For example; in-app payments, mobile notifications to boost customer engagements, geolocation features, and A/B testing. Get started on a mobile app for your business to start seeing boosted brand awareness and loyalty. To explore costs associated with developing an app, be sure to check out the app cost calculator I reviewed.


Looking for help? Tired and believing there has got to be a better way?

Let's talk about your business. With over a decade of experience leading companies and transforming lives, and a Master's degree in Org. Development and Leadership, Mike can help you find the best way forward!

Subscribe to receive my latest business tips and tactics in your inbox.

Mike Gingerich life leadership business coaching

Bing Follows Google's Lead on Mobile Search

Following closely on Google’s “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update, Bing has announced its own rollout of mobile friendly ranking signals over the next few months.

The short update is that both search engines are now factoring into search ranking whether a website is mobile "friendly" or not.

Basically if your site is not easy to use and navigate on a mobile device, your rankings may be going down.

Unlike Google, Bing has not set a specified date for these search adjustments to go into full effect, choosing instead to use a slow release they’re calling the “mobile-friendliness road map”.

Bing is taking this approach in order to better communicate the changes, reduce webmaster crisis moments, and allow time for them to receive feedback along the way.

Bing first released their mobile-friendly search tags as part of a test in April. This allows users to easily identify sites that comply with mobile on the search engine results.

This signaled to the rest of the world that more mobile search updates were to follow. Now, they’ve released specific information around what things they will include in their new mobile signals.

Major considerations for those managing websites include:

bing

Bing is also releasing a tool this summer that will allow webmasters to test their sites for mobile compliance.

It will mimic Google’s existing mobile-friendly tool providing a simple yes or no answer on whether a site is mobile friendly with suggestions on what to improve if a “no” is given.

Keep in mind there is no degree of mobile friendliness - a site either is or isn’t. However, Bing’s algorithm will be real time, so as soon as Bing crawls the new mobile-friendly version of a page there will be a benefit due to the new signals.

For those wanting to dive into the geeky web developer side a bit more, here's a tip:  Your web developer should also remember not to block resources such as CSS files or JavaScript from Bingbots.

These need to be fully crawled for the layout of a page to be understood, and thus appropriately labeled as mobile friendly.

While these changes will improve rankings for mobile-friendly pages, quality will remain the most important factor in search rankings for a website.

A page highly relevant to the search term requested that is not mobile friendly will still rank accordingly and not be heavily penalized.

Per Bing, this is because they are striving to reach a “fine balance” in terms of user-friendly rankings versus straight query relevancy.

So the shift to mobile continues on the web and wise businesses will be making plans to update their site to be mobile friendly.

We're here to answer any questions you have, please feel free to contact us.

Free Friend to Friend Payment through Facebook Messenger App: What It Means for Your Business

What It Means for Your Business

Recently, Facebook announced the ability to send payments from person to person through it's Messenger app. Facebook's Messenger app is currently used by 600 million people and is on a steep growth curve! And unlike competitor payment apps Paypal and Venmo, there will be no charge for this service.

Right now, this option is being targeted at individuals. But small businesses could use this feature to make transactions, and most importantly, accept payments for products and services from customers. What is rolled out now is basically phase one of a plan to add more features to the Messenger App and to make it more commerce and business friendly. How do we know this? Facebook held a Developer conference in March and at that event they announced the launch of a series of developer features which is the starting point for opening up the app for more features, much like occurred with Facebook Pages in the past. Payments, of course, is a key feature, and this initial peer-to-peer tool is one to experiment with and watch because it will evolve for businesses!

Facebook Messenger Payments Feature

The app is extremely easy to use. For the person paying/sending the money the process is as follows:

  1. In the Messenger App, the Sender taps the '$' (money) button while conversing with someone
  2. At the prompt, he or she enters a dollar amount for the payment
  3. He or she taps the 'Pay' button and enters debit card information (just the first time) when prompted.

For the business or person receiving the money, it's even simpler:

  1. The Receiver opens the message with the payment and taps 'Add Card' to add his or her debit account details, and payments will flow into that account.

Facebook says payments through Facebook messenger can take up to three business days to complete (which is faster than paid options such as Paypal and Stripe).

Soon, Facebook will integrate CSR (customer service) chat and voice capabilities for businesses via their Businesses on Messenger program, a service for businesses who provide support, service and order tracking. A business will be able to add a customized button to its e-commerce website that'll open Facebook Messenger to a one-on-one conversation with a customer, and give them information about orders, shipping, delivery and more. It will be able to send a customer the following types of communication:

All of these items will also be sent with alerts using smartphone Push Notifications, enabling quick notices and quick access to any message.

Formally integrating payments for business services is a real future possibility. Currently, the 'Pay' button allows smaller businesses to offer payments on Facebook for an individual on a one-off basis. Doing it on a larger scale will bring Facebook up to speed with international competitors. It also keeps Facebook even more relevant to users, not just as a social network but not as a payment system. All of this bodes well for Facebook's future!

To find out how to take advantage of Facebook Messenger for Business for service and support functions, go to: www.messenger.com/business

Will you use the payments feature in the near future? In my opinion it will be wise to get accustomed to it as this is a tool with great promise and with the growth rate of the app already, the user-base is there for this to be a key tool for years ahead.

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