Customers losing their wallets may well be the best thing to happen to your business! Surprised? PayPal, the leading global provider of payment solutions for consumers and businesses, says that with customers being increasingly inclined towards carrying ‘digital wallets’, the humble wallet may soon be assigned to the annals of history. And this will inevitably present a great opportunity for businesses to sell more! The future is ‘Cashless’ – is your small business ready?
PayPal Global Consumer Survey 2013
PayPal, which billed $14 billion in mobile payments last year (more than any other service provider and an increase of 250 percent over its previous year’s volumes), has recently published the findings of a global survey conducted across 5 major countries – the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Germany – on the future of the wallet. Whether its going to the gym, the laundromat, grocery store, restaurants or even to the beach, 83% of the 1000 respondents surveyed expressed the desire of being able to go without a wallet. The figure for U.S consumers wanting to go ‘wallet-less’, was even higher at 86%.
The business side of this story is lost sales opportunities, with a large section of American consumers reporting that they have been unable to pay for something because they simply didn’t have enough cash on them.
PayPal’s Cash for Register Offer for Growing Businesses
The Survey clearly shows that consumers are wanting to do away with keeping cards in their wallets, carry around cash or having to deal with spare change that is often handed over after a transaction. To help growing businesses address this, PayPal has introduced the offer to encourage smaller businesses to migrate from the old cash registers to modern day payment solutions such as PayPal Here (which enables card/ check acceptance and PayPal processing over iOS and Android mobile devices) or any of its payment processing partners such as ShopKeep, Vend, ERPLY, NCR Silver. Business owners looking to enable the entire gamut of non-cash payment methods for their business can, thanks to this offer, do so at nil transaction processing fee on these systems for remainder of the year.
And so what does the future of payment processing hold? David Marcus, President of PayPal, in a recent blog aptly called ‘Lets lose our wallets’ had this to say, “I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to the day where I can lose my wallet altogether – both the word and the physical object”. As per David, his company is focusing on developing technologies that can simplify people’s lives and not just act as facilitators of currency exchange. PayPal’s Check In and Order Ahead app for instance allows users to identify themselves online and pre-order before walking in to collect their items (available at select locations in the U.S). So imagine that you make your monthly visit to the local stationery shop and the moment you are there, the store attendant knows who you are and what you want.
Clearly, growing businesses aiming at a bigger chunk of the market must enable non-cash acceptance methods for their clients. And the cash-for-register free trail offer may just be the perfect opportunity for many small businesses to consider doing so.
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