Businesses using smooth and easy processes to collect payments are known to thrive…

In 2021, real-time payment transactions recorded a 94.7 per cent surge in Nigeria. The country’s 3.7 billion real-time transactions meant it ranked sixth—only behind India, China, Thailand, Brazil, and South Korea—as the world’s most developed real-time payment markets.

This indicates that the digital payments revolution continues to have great prospects for the nation’s economy. However, despite the rapid evolution of real-time payments, many business owners in Nigeria have not successfully hacked how to integrate faster and more reliable payment processes in their business.

Payment, when successful, is a usual indicator of a complete business transaction process but when the process is slow and ineffective, it can lead to wanton frustration for you and your customers. In extreme cases, a broken payment system can lead to business failure, especially for small businesses, as customers would move to stores with easier payment processes. Hence, as a business owner, you need payment processes that are seamless and effective.

We will share, in this article, tips which will help you to collect payments from your customers easily and faster so you can focus on growing your business.

1) Provide easy online and in-store payment options

Many customers are increasingly intent on moving around with less cash while many others are seeking ways to make cardless transactions, because of the stress and risk associated with handling cash or losing bank cards.

Providing an easy payment option such as accepting the transfer of funds to your account is a simple way you can collect payments from such customers. You can easily sign up with a payment company offering virtual accounts and generate temporary account numbers for this purpose.

Generally, virtual accounts attract low charges, as standard bank fees and rates do not apply to them. This is a bonus for you, as you can increase your profits.

2) Adopt a faster payment confirmation process

Many customers dread going into stores where there are usually long queues as a result of delayed payment confirmation. This is common in stores where sales attendants are only allowed to call their store owners to confirm if they have received alerts from a paying customer.

This process is usually time-consuming, frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing for customers. While you can’t be present at all your store locations at all times, you should find a more straightforward alternative to confirm payments.

For instance, using Bani’s virtual accounts to collect payments from your customers will allow you to add email and mobile numbers for each of your store locations and allow specific store members to receive payment notifications in real-time.

3) Provide different bank alternatives for customers

This is not the easiest thing to do, as it would be too strenuous to open an account with every bank in Nigeria. But if they could, customers would naturally prefer to make transfers to any bank of their choice when making payments. This way, they can avoid inter-bank network challenges that can sometimes lead to transaction delay or failure.

Unfortunately, many payment companies offering virtual accounts for merchants provide only one bank option for customers to transfer to and there are high chances of delayed or failed transactions.

However, if you want virtual accounts that will allow you to provide different bank options for your customers, you should consider Bani’s unique virtual account offering which allows paying customers to choose from multiple tier 1 banks in Nigeria.

4) Incentivize customers to pay through your easiest payment option

Another way to reduce cash payments at your store and also the high chances of failed transactions through card payments is to incentivize your customers to pay through your easiest payment option. And in this case, through bank transfer to any of your virtual accounts.

This is highly recommended, considering that sales attendants are usually happy to do away with the stress of providing balance to customers after collecting payments or the stress of balancing cash after a long day’s work. Generally, it will make payment collections easier and help you to better manage cash flow across multiple stores.

You can encourage the use of bank transfers to your virtual accounts by offering your customers discounts on goods and services they are paying for or little gifts at certain periods of the year.

People love gifts, so think of ways you can appreciate them for their patronage and making payment reconciliation in your store(s) stress-free.

In summary, if you want to reduce cash flow concerns, minimise stress levels regarding slow and unreliable payment collection processes, satisfy your customers and successfully grow your business, you will have to adopt payment systems that easily allow these touch points.

Fortunately, you can solve your payment collection problems and implement these strategies with a partner like Bani.

If you need any assistance, our team is on standby to guide you through the implementation of the process to collect payments easier and faster and ultimately maximise your business potential.