Payment processing infiltrates all areas of business. Whether you are the owner, the bookkeeper, or in the IT team, you will eventually feel the pain of not having a seamless customer payment process if you rely on manual methods only.
Despite an increasing adoption of digital technology within the payments industry, there are many SMEs who are not keeping up with their competitors. In fact, some will get left behind permanently unless they act now to embrace and adopt automated payment processing technology. By changing the way your business handles its payments, some, or all, of the following pain points that commonly stunt business performance and growth can be eliminated.
Administrative overload
A lot of time-consuming administrative work goes into back-end processing. Even more so if the process must be repeated manually on a recurring basis. Inputting customer data manually also opens itself up to greater human error, which can cause a ripple effect of failed payments that result in poor cash flow (not to mention the administrative headache of having to trace and fix mistakes manually). Employees should not have to waste valuable time on tedious data input and cross-checking when there are cost-effective tools readily available to automate processing, from file upload to reconciliation of payment. In the case of setting up new customers for debit orders, traditional voice and paper mandates are much less efficient than their electronic equivalent, which allows customers to sign up and authorise payment themselves on any web-enabled device.
Revenue leakage
Research shows that 67% of small businesses fail within the first 10 years and that a lack of working capital or funding is one of the primary reasons for this failure. It is no surprise that companies that are unable to set up and run debit orders for their customers will find themselves constantly chasing payments. Delayed payments can lead to unwanted revenue leakage which makes it difficult to budget correctly. Consequent payment penalties and other transactional costs can also negatively impact your bottom line and therefore increase your cash flow risk.
Complicated or inefficient integrations
It is difficult for businesses to keep up with rapidly developing banking technology, unless they have access to a specialist tech team with the required banking integrations and technological expertise. Companies often find that their existing technological infrastructure is too outdated or cumbersome to facilitate an efficient payment process. The maturity and level of banking relationship will also play a role, as weaker relationships can mean that you do not get the priority or support required, often resulting in payment processes that are slower or overcomplicated.
Similarly, the prohibitive costs of technological advancement may prevent businesses from adopting more streamlined processes they would otherwise pursue.
Fraud risk
Some existing payment and checkout processes don’t provide sufficient security for online payments and increase the risk of customer identify theft and fraud. The reputational risk this poses is not one that any business can afford and should be avoided at all costs.
How to overcome payment processing pain points using BankTech
If any of the above pain points hit a nerve, you’ll be pleased to learn that by integrating your ERP with BankTech, you’ll have easy access to all the tools you need to optimise your customer payments, both once-off and recurring. Our banking technology can also be accessed through our simplified APIs or our DebitMe add-on.
Once you are up and running with BankTech your business will reap the following benefits:
Increased administrative efficiency
No more time wasted on repetitive manual data input that is prone to human error! With BankTech, you can automate all your payments and collections instructions from initial sign-up to reconciliation.
Reduced receivables
No more chasing payments! Using BankTech’s DebitMe add-on, debit order collections can be set up, verified and authenticated, which should result in a higher payment success rate and a more stable cash flow forecast. Other available automation features can aid in reducing receivables. These are auto-try logic (automatic re-submission when an exception occurs to minimise unpaids), and auto-dunning (event-based triggers to automatically manage customer arrears).
Efficient and easy integrations
Forget about expensive technological architecture and restrictive banking integrations. With BankTech, you need only integrate once to be able to access all major South African banks. You can also easily switch between collection instruments, which helps to increase revenue and collections efficiency.
Increased protection against fraud
You can protect your business reputation when you implement DebiCheck as your business’ preferred debit order mandate type. Using DebiCheck, a customer’s details are verified before they authenticate any new mandate. This makes it harder for hackers to steal identities and/or banking details.
Hands-on management
BankTech’s omni-channel management portal allows you to have a single view with control of your entire book, irrespective of upload method, whether by API, file or portals. Management can run reports and amendments with ease.
For more information on the best way to use BankTech to increase operational efficiency and remove your existing payment pain points, please contact our sales team to request a demo of our solutions. You can reach us at sales@bank.tech or by completing an online contact form.
