Small Businesses Embrace Integrated Payment Solutions for Competitive Edge

Nowadays, small businesses must find increasingly intelligent ways to survive and thrive in the online and physical retail market. One underappreciated but important way to modernise your business processes is by integrating your payment processing system(s) with a wide range of software tools, whether accounting-, marketing-, or productivity-related. This type of integration will not only help you improve the efficiency of daily business operations but also open up new opportunities to increase business growth and market share.

The more payment and payment-related choices you can offer to your consumers, the more demographics you can appeal to. This can help increase your company’s long-term sales volumes. As reported by Bain and Company, ‘Independent software vendors have the potential to address $35 trillion in payments, or 15% of the worldwide total, by integrating payments into their platforms’. This article will explore why you may want to consider integrated payment systems for your company by walking you through some of their main benefits.

Improving customer experience

One of the main reasons you should consider integrating your payment processing system with multiple software platforms is to encourage the expansion of your existing customer base. Different customers prefer different payment methods, so offering your client base a wide range of payment options can decrease the rate of cart abandonment. As an example, older customers might prefer to pay with credit cards, and younger demographics may opt for a digital wallet instead.

A 2024 Baymard Institute survey found that 22% of consumers abandoned their carts because of a long or complicated checkout process, so researching and accommodating your customers’ preferences can help you remove or reduce the roadblocks preventing them from efficiently completing their purchases. This is especially important in the modern, global marketplace, due to an increased number of international customers potentially wanting to do business with you. International customers can sometimes have a unique set of payment preferences compared to consumers who are more local to you. One example of these aforementioned payment processing services, Airwallex, can integrate seamlessly with an online retail platform like Shopify and accept digital payments from both domestic and international customers in one go.

Integrating your payment processing system with various software platforms can also improve your customers’ shopping experience in other ways, for example with features like one-click payments, which can save a customer’s payment details to make future purchases quicker and easier. An integrated payment system could also possibly provide personalised buying recommendations to your customers based on their purchase history. Conveniences like this can help encourage one-time customers to come back for future purchases, thereby boosting your retention rates and overall business growth.

Streamlining business operations

Integrated payment systems can do more than just make your customers’ lives easier — they can also be configured to simplify the daily business processes you might carry out or oversee as a business owner. If you can integrate your payment system with an inventory management system like Unleashed Software or a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, you can create a software ecosystem that both saves time and reduces the risk of data or reporting errors. As an example, an integrated payment system could automatically update your inventory levels when it detects that a sale has been made, giving you an accurate and up-to-date view of your stock levels.

An integrated system could also automatically generate invoices or send details of transactions to your accounting software. This saves you or your employees from spending precious time performing tedious data entry work, as well as minimising the risk of human error. This can give you and your team more time to focus on key business activities like sales and marketing.

Ensuring security and compliance

Security is a key concern for both businesses and customers when it comes to making and receiving payments. An integrated payment system can provide advanced security features that can help protect you and your customers from fraud or similar malpractice. These features can include intelligent encryption technology to ensure that data in transit cannot be easily decoded in case it falls into the wrong hands. Additionally, many integrated payment solutions are designed to comply with leading industry standards, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, making sure you don’t fall foul of international payment security regulations.

Enabling a multi-channel shopping experience

Nowadays, the modern customer expects an effortless buying experience no matter where they’re shopping, whether that’s in-store, online via a desktop, or using a mobile app. If you’re interested in offering a multi-channel shopping experience like this, it’s strongly advisable to set up an intelligent integrated payment system.

For example, you may find that a customer wants to pay for their purchase online but collect it in-store because it’s faster. Alternatively, they may pay for it in-store but ask for a tracked delivery to their home, depending on convenience. This is further evidenced by a 2024 US survey of over 38,000 consumers, which found that 53% of shoppers want to buy things online but still have the option to return them in-store. By setting up an integrated system, you can ensure all these transactions are recorded in the previously mentioned software ecosystem, making it easier for you to track inventory and invoices. This multi-channel approach can greatly improve customer satisfaction by offering consumers more agency over how they buy and receive their items.

Simplifying accounting and financial reports

Another major benefit of integrating your payment system with modern accounting software is that it can be much simpler to manage key financial reports and data, as well as ensure that you are compliant with relevant tax regulations. You can link the two programs together to ensure that payment data is automatically sent to your accounting software, which can then chug along in the background, automatically generating financial reports and any documents you might need for tax season. This also reduces the risk of man-made errors in your financial records. Additionally, if you operate an international business that deals with multiple tax authorities, you can set up your integrated system to perform automatic tax calculations for each region you operate in.

Enhancing customer service

Depending on the specific needs of your business, you can also integrate your payment system with your customer service platform, allowing your team to support customers more efficiently. An integrated system can enable your customer service representatives to quickly access transaction details, resolve payment issues, and process refunds or exchanges, all without having to switch between multiple software systems. This means your customers can have order- or payment-related issues resolved faster, leading to improved customer satisfaction and time savings for your company. A positive customer service experience will also encourage one-time buyers to become repeat customers due to an increased trust in your brand.

To conclude, integrating your payment processing system with a variety of admin and business-related software is quickly becoming more of a necessity than an optional extra, thanks to an increasingly globalised and digital world. If you invest enough time and resources into setting up a long-term integrated payment system, you can make your company more time- and cost-efficient. This will boost your chances of enjoying long-term commercial success and winning a loyal customer base.

Remember, setting up an integrated system is not an overnight process, but with some trial and error, you can find the right blend of software that works for you and your small business.