There is no question that using cashless payment systems has many advantages, including increasing your revenue, as well as saving you as a business, and your customers, both time and money. In today’s fast-moving digital-centric society, everyone is always on the go and consumers depend on businesses to keep things moving efficiently for them. What’s more is that no one wants to carry cash anymore. This is particularly true in Canada, where almost 90% of all Canadians own both a debit and credit card, meaning electronic payments are prevalent in Canadian Society across all age groups. Having a reliable and modern cashless payment system is therefore a must for any business. There are several ways to reap the benefits of cashless payment systems, many are just as rewarding as the next. Let’s take a look.
Here are 9 benefits of cashless payment systems:
1. Accept More Currencies
Whether American Dollars, British Pounds, or Euros, if someone walks into your store and offers you a foreign currency, what do you do? Well, this isn’t an issue with a cashless payment system that accepts debit and credit cards since you simply charge your customer in Canadian dollars and their banks take care of the rest.
2. Reach a wider audience
With 90% of Canadians owning both a debit and credit card, you are able to extend the reach of your business to a much wider audience. Quite simply, this is clearly the way Canadian consumers want to pay. Additionally, by selecting a cashless payment system that accepts mobile app payments, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, you have the benefit of attracting newer generations of customers to your business, such as the coveted Millennials. This sets your business up for long-term success. Millennials currently have an estimated income of $237 billion, and will make up a whopping 75% of the Canadian workforce in the next 15 years.
3. Reduce Lineup Times
Faster lineups mean a better customer experience and more revenue for your business. When customers pay with cash, they start digging through their pockets and wallet to count the correct amount, and once they pass that money over to the merchant, the merchant then needs to count the cash to ensure they are receiving the correct amount. Mistakes can be made by either party, slowing down the process even more. All the while, those waiting in line become exceedingly frustrated with how long it’s taking to reach them. Countless people leave lineups on a daily basis and countless more won’t even enter a line if they feel it’s too long or not moving fast enough. This is lost business that you will never get back.
Having cashless payment systems to accept payments can help you move your lineups much faster than with receiving cash; particularly if you carry a POS terminal that has a contactless payment feature, because this feature allows your customers to pay for their transactions by just tapping their debit card, credit card, or mobile device – through apps such as as Apple Pay and Google Pay, as long as they’re under $100. Taking things further, Clover Flex, a wireless payment processing device that is new to Canada, allows you to make your lineups lightning-quick by accepting payments from your customers while they wait in line. Your customers’ orders can be automatically fired to your staff to prepare, thereby saving you and your customers a ton of time and making your business operations very efficient. This concept is referred to as “line busting”.
4. One-to-One Marketing Opportunities
Using a cashless system can allow you to capture valuable customer information and have them opt-in to receive marketing communications from your business. Using the Clover Flex device for example, you can ask your customer for their information and immediately pull up their transaction history the next time they visit your business or want to make a purchase. This allows you to personalize their experience and send them timely promotional emails or texts to bring them back!
5. Better Tracking and Reporting
For both your business and your customers. As a business, tracking where and who your business is coming from are vital. Accepting payments through a cashless payment system allows you to digitally track your customer transactions. Some POS terminals allow you to automatically capture and gain access to important reporting information such as your top and bottom salespeople, as well as your top and bottom selling items. The decisions you are able to make by gaining real-time access to this type of information are priceless.
Likewise, one reason for higher credit card use among consumers is their ability to consolidate their expenses into a single bill payment. This is likely because it simplifies their lives and helps them keep track of their spending.
6. Reduce Costs
Businesses that accept cash, have to cash out; businesses that accept digital payments such as debit, credit, and mobile apps, have to batch out. The difference with cash is that you have to spend a lot of time manually collecting, counting, as well as bundling and rolling up your cash and coins, reconciling your accounts, and then taking everything over to your bank to make a deposit; whereas when batching out for digital payments, all of these things are done with just a few simple presses of a button.
- You can substantially reduce your costs even further by utilizing innovative unattended payment technologies, such as MONEXgroup’s Contactless Only payment solutions. These solutions require no staff at all, and have changed the shape of several industries, including: Tap & Wash for car washes, Tap to Donate for not-for-profits, Tap & Park for parking facilities. They have also invaded the laundry space by converting laundry machines at thousands of apartments across the country. Each of these businesses have financially benefited from reducing their costs by taking advantage of unattended cashless payment systems.
7. Disrupt Old Industries, Create New Ones
One of the greatest benefits of cashless payment systems, particularly innovative ones, are the opportunities to create and develop concepts that wouldn’t otherwise work. PizzaForno is a prime example. PizzaForno is an innovative new concept that is quickly spreading across Canada. It’s basically a 24/7 pizzeria that dispenses fresh hot artisanal pizza out of an outdoor kiosk in under 3 mins! What’s great about this concept is that it’s completely unattended, made possible with MONEXgroup’s Contactless Only cashless payment system. In fact, this concept really works well because our innovative Unattended Terminal simplifies the payment process with a mere tap of a debit or credit card, or mobile device, and can withstand all of the extreme outdoor elements (hot or cold, rain or shine). Because this foodservice concept requires zero staff, fits into small outdoor spaces as little as 80 sq.ft., and offers 24/7 end-to-end quick transactions to their customers, operating costs are held much lower compared to a fully-staffed cash model, which actually makes the concept feasible.
Other industries are just waiting to be created with the unattended cashless model. Think about new highly labour-intensive product or service ideas that could potentially work if you didn’t have to pay high wages for employees, requires only a small space, and would attract customers 24/7, and rethink them with robotics and unattended cashless payments. It’s very exciting to think about all of the business ideas that have yet to launch.
8. More Secure and Safer for Everyone
When you choose a payment processor for your cashless payment systems that is PCI compliant and employs EMV chip technology, your business is better protected against fraudulent transactions and financial data breaches. Your customers’ money is better protected as well because their transactions are fully secured and encrypted. And since neither you nor your customers need to worry about withdrawing, depositing, and carrying cash, the risk of loss and theft is vastly reduced, if not eliminated. This means that everyone’s’ money is more secure and everyone’s safety is significantly improved, as most robbers target cash not cards.
9. Better Customer Experience
Everything on this list adds up to a superior experience for your customers. Whether they are tourists coming from outside of Canada looking to purchase your product or service when they don’t have enough Canadian cash, Millennials looking to tap their iPhones to pay, or consumers hoping for shorter and faster-moving lineups to save them time and aggravation, the benefits of cashless payment systems for consumers are huge. And their benefit is your benefit because customer experience is arguably the single biggest factor in business success. Great customer experiences will result in new customers and repeat business from your existing customers.
Cashless Payment Systems Benefits us All
While we covered several key benefits of cashless payment systems here, there are many more. It is clear that providing cashless payment options to your customers makes your business relevant right now and allows it to thrive well into the future, making it definitely worthwhile to explore both traditional cashless payment systems as well as new and innovative ones. Being able to increase your revenue and decrease your costs, while improving customer experience, are all essential for the success of your business. Just as importantly, our ability to develop and execute new business ideas utilizing the latest innovative unattended cashless payment technologies will lead to a more efficient society and better quality of life.
