How to Choose Alternative Payment Methods for your Business?

E-commerce is moving forward by leaps and bounds, and the pandemic has significantly contributed to this growth. The ability to pay for a product or service online is no longer surprising, but when switching from offline, a business still faces the problem of choosing reliable alternative payment solutions.
Running an online business involves:

• Planning the company’s finances.
• Organizing payment acceptance on the site.
• Ensuring the safety of cash flows.

Every business owner strives to increase profits.
This can be achieved in different ways:

• Increase the average check of the buyer.
• Stimulate buying of more expensive products.
• Enter new markets.
• Attract a new audience.

However, if the buyer fails to pay for the goods, the buyer will certainly leave the basket and never come to you again. Therefore, it is important to adjust the acceptance of payments on the site in accordance with the preferences of the audience in a particular region. Today we will get acquainted with various alternative forms of payment and figure out how to choose the most suitable solution for a particular business.

Using means other than conventional bank cards to pay for products and services means approaching alternative payment methods. APMs are becoming increasingly popular due to new technologies that let customers harness the power of digital internet wallets, banking, and smartphones to purchase using biometrics.

APM can be roughly divided into three groups:

1. Bank transfers

For bank transfers, the buyer must first authorize the transaction in their online bank in order to receive payment. Bank transfers are becoming more common at almost the same rate as electronic wallets.

2. Wallet-based solutions

The two different types of wallet-based solutions are e-wallets for electronic payments and mobile transactions.

Customers can safely store their money in e-wallets to be used for transfers and payments. There are several methods for replenishing your wallet. The two most popular e-wallets are these two.

When used, a mobile device functions as a wallet. This payment method is gaining popularity because it is so convenient to use Apple Pay and Google Pay.

3. Cash In

The two types of Cash-In are prepaid accounts, which function similarly to prepaid cards but operate outside the credit card system, and prepaid cards, which use established payment networks like Visa and Mastercard. The available balance on the Cash-in card, which serves as the spending limit, must be topped up in advance in order to make a payment.

Look for like-minded people when choosing an alternative payment method

Not all payment organizations provide global coverage for online businesses. Many operate locally or in a specific region. It is important to choose a payment provider with the technical ability to fulfill the target audience’s needs.

First, determine your business’s main features based on the product’s target audience. For example, you are a rapidly growing company in your sector. Then you need alternative payment options that would implement new technologies with a modern, entrepreneurial approach to solving various kinds of problems.

If your business sells specialized goods or services, you need to concentrate on locating a supplier with first-rate customer service. In order to maintain the standard of quality that you have set with respect to the end user.

Additionally, you should search for companies in the payment providers sector that are comparable to yours if your B2B business caters to major enterprises. Growth will occur considerably more quickly in such a tandem, and the likelihood of long-term collaboration is very high.

Think Big

If you are planning to develop in international markets, even if for the time being you are targeting only conditional Germany and not the whole world, look for an expert provider with an understanding of local features in a large number of countries. This will speed up your path to scaling.

With the right approach, it is much easier to find out what to focus on and how to provide a clear flow at the payment stage for customers from new locations. For example, it is hard to imagine entering the USA or Latin America without local card solutions and alternative payment methods – Paypal, Boleto, Baloto, Oxxo, and Effecty.

Understanding the audience acquisition channel, geography, behavioral logic, and buyer context are integral factors in setting up a seamless online payment process. Knowledge of local taxation and work with different currencies and financial institutions is very important. After all, every market has unique compliance standards as well as norms of regulation.

Transaction security

This is an important criterion for a supplier because it affects your company’s dependability and market stability. Modern data encryption methods, tokenization services, and data-secure terminals are all components of a well-designed payment solution. This assurance is guaranteed by the payment provider’s adherence to the PCI DSS requirements, which are the data security standard used by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, and Discover in the payment card business.

Keep up with the times

In the field of online payments, new solutions are constantly emerging that make transactions safer, faster, and more convenient for users. But not all market players are in a hurry to innovate. There are several reasons for this: firstly, such solutions can be costly, and not all acquiring banks are ready to invest resources in them. Secondly, some technologies require the bank to rethink the current processes and architecture, and changing the “status quo” is difficult.

Therefore, choose partners that keep up with the times: this directly affects the growth of your company’s revenue. Basic requirements for a partner: an admin panel with a user-friendly interface, ease of integration, technical solutions to improve payment security and increase payment conversion.