For SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) to grow and be successful, they must provide a broad range of online payment methods at their virtual checkouts/cashiers/banking sections.
In other words, companies that accept more online payment solutions are more likely to be successful than a rival company that accepts fewer payment methods.
Let’s dive straight into discovering more about how offering multiple payment methods can impact the growth and scale of businesses, no matter how small or large they are.
What Are The Benefits For Businesses That Accept A Wider Range Of Online Payment Methods?
By accepting a broader range of online payment methods, SMEs can look forward to several benefits that can help their business grow. In short, accepting more online payment methods can help foster customer loyalty, enhance trust, and improve the customer experience, which leads to greater satisfaction and increased sales. For example, players are more likely to sign up for legally permitted Canadian iGaming sites to claim new player online casino bonuses if their preferred deposit method is accepted.
Canadian players typically look for trusted brands that accept various popular Canadian online payment methods, such as Visa, Mastercard, Paysafecard, American Express, Flexepin, PayPal, Neteller, Apple Pay, Trustly, Interac, Payz, PayNearMe, Pay By Phone, eCheck, and Instadebit, and will avoid sites that don’t accept these secure, reliable, low-cost, and convenient online payment processing solutions.
Most of these secure, convenient, user-friendly, and cheap online payment methods can be used for deposits and withdrawals.
Here is a more detailed explanation of why businesses should always consider offering more ways for their customers to purchase their products or services, provided those payment processing companies are well-known in the target markets:
- Improves the customer experience – customers have a more memorable, satisfying, seamless, and user-friendly experience when purchasing items using online payment methods they are familiar with, meaning they will more likely return in the future to boost future sales
- Enhances customer loyalty – similar to above, a stress/free and simplified transaction experience at the virtual checkout can strengthen the loyalty customers have in a business, which also helps to encourage repeat business in the future
- Increased sales/revenue – by offering more payment methods, conversion rates will increase because customers who get to the checkout are more likely to find one of their preferred payment gateways to complete the transaction
- Broader customer base – businesses have a much wider reach and can attract more customers simply by offering more payment methods at the checkout, including a range of traditional and alternative payment methods
- Reduced cart abandonment – customers are far less likely to abandon their virtual shopping cart or not go ahead with the deposit/purchase when at least one of their preferred online payment methods is accepted
- Expansion into new markets – by accepting globally renowned payment brands that are available in foreign markets, businesses can handle cross-geographic transactions and expand their global reach
- Increased traffic and visibility – it has also been said that when SMEs offer a broader range of traditional and alternative payment methods, it can help improve their search engine rankings and potentially drive more traffic to their websites because it signals credibility and trustworthiness to potential customers
What Other Benefits Are There For Smes To Accept A Wider Range Of Payment Methods?
By offering customers/players a broader selection of well-established online payment gateways to facilitate deposits/purchases and withdrawals, especially top-tier brands known for processing near-instant transactions, businesses can improve cash flow and manage their finances more efficiently and effectively.
Additionally, online transactions processed by major brands are typically cheaper than those processed by lesser-known payment providers.
The top payment brands are also typically safer to use and far more secure, with better data protection measures and higher levels of encryption to ensure transactions are never hijacked or intercepted by cybercriminals. In other words, accepting a broader range of trusted online payment brands greatly reduces the risk of fraudulent activities.
It also gives SMEs a competitive advantage over their rivals that accept fewer payment methods at their virtual checkouts. To sum up, having more payment methods can significantly impact the growth and scale of a business.
Final Thoughts
These days, most people regularly use up to three, four, or five different online payment methods. Some people have a favourite and one or two backup methods in case their preferred online payment method isn’t accepted on any websites they are trying to purchase items from.
For example, it’s not uncommon to find people who like using their Visa debit card, PayPal eWallet, and Apple Pay mobile wallet to pay for things on their favourite websites.
These three payment methods are accepted almost everywhere, but if you find a website that doesn’t accept either of them and you really don’t want to start using a different payment method that you may not be so familiar with, there’s a good chance that you will simply look for another website that offers similar products or services and purchase from that site instead of having to use another payment method.
This is why businesses need to broaden their horizons and offer more online payment methods at their virtual checkouts, especially if they don’t want to miss out on sales.