The date is May 21st 2015 and the BBC have just released an interesting article (and then so did I), debit and credit card payments have now overtaken that of cash payments. The significance of the outsizing is apparent and the implication of it is this: if you’re not taking payments online, then you’re missing out on money to your organisation; and get this “Cash volumes are expected to fall by 30% over the next 10 years”. So as time goes on more customer opportunities to an organisation will also increase in the digital world, whilst cash usage adopts a nasty looking ski slope-esque motif on data graphs.
What does a business do? Sure, it could get a card machine, but digital payments to organisations don’t all happen in-store, in fact a great many occur on the internet: ecommerce. Let’s look at the main options for taking payments online:
– Payment Gateway
– Virtual Terminal
– Pay-by-Link / Pay Button
– Wire Transfer
– Wallet System
– Recurring Payment Agreements
Wire transfers are considered unsafe if the persons involved don’t know each other due to the anonymity factor. These can be used for illegal or fraudulent activities. With everything else though, Cardstream have got your back. What’s more, we don’t actually charge per payment option. Our one month tariff covers all of these options for helping your business take payments online. But behind the ingenious technology we’ve designed and produced to help you, you need a merchant account too. A merchant account is a banking facility whose role it Is to move funds from your clients bank, into your own business bank. Cardstream have relationships with all of these banking services in the UK and are able to refer to any one of them for an account for your business. Our independent relationship with the merchant banks allows a quotes to be built that may be lower than if you were to approach the company individually. You may also hear the merchant banks referred to as an acquiring bank or a merchant acquirer.
For only £18 a month and a small transaction fee, you could begin taking payments online for your business by debit and credit cart and have free Support and Advice from professionals at Cardstream.
