Today’s businesses are inundated with numerous digital processes. If these processes don’t work in harmony, compatibility problems may occur. Maximizing the revenue from your investment means that you must harmonize your digital functions to make your business work efficiently.
In this digitally revolutionized world, integrated payment systems sit as the cornerstone of an efficient system. Integrated payment systems connect complicated payment processing functions to other essential functions like accounting, customer relationship management, and inventory. Streamlining these channels with a focus on the right point of sale system not only aligns your payment process and business administration, it also allows these channels to operate in unison. Integrated payment systems offer an ideal way to improve your back-end business operations. Simply put, an integrated payment system offers firm support to your business structure and can help strengthen the organization of your business as a whole.
How do integrated payments work?
One industry study concluded that only 11% of consumers pay with cash, while 40% of consumers prefer credit card transactions. Even still, finding an efficient and affordable integrated payments and credit card processing solution can be a daunting challenge.
That said, doing so is worth it. The truth is, most merchants overlook the time and cost associated with manually collecting invoices, entering transactions, and managing inventory. These manual tasks are both draining and susceptible to errors. However, this manual labor can be eliminated with the adoption of an integrated payment system.
Let us compare the credit card transaction with and without the integrated payment system.
Here is how it will work without an integrated payment system:
- Receive the order from a customer over the phone or online.
- Enter their credit card number into your system.
- Keep the transaction receipt safe, print an invoice, and staple both together.
- Match paper and electronic invoices and apply payments to invoices.
- Manually adjust your general ledger and accounts receivable.
- Now, here is the same process with an integrated payment process:
Receive the order from a customer over the phone or online.
- Enter the customer’s credit card number into your payment system.
- Process the payment while your integrated system updates your inventory, bookkeeping, and invoices.
As you can see, having an integrated payment system allows for a much less arduous transaction process. The integrated payment system even registers invoices as paid and automatically enters customer payments into your general ledger and accounts receivable.
The above example is just one small glimpse into how an integrated payment system can increase your business’ efficiencies. Now, let’s take a closer look at how adopting an integrated payment system can benefit your business.
Integrated payment systems streamline operations.
Integrated payments allow you to bypass the time-consuming process of entering and reconciling transaction data.
Your integrated ledger automatically registers the transaction, while also producing an immediate transaction history for better reporting. Manual accounting is more prone to human errors. Updated in real-time, integrated payments reduce the probability of errors and improve the efficiency of your system overall.
Integrated payment systems improve cash flow.
Did you know that approximately 90% of small businesses fail because of inefficient cash flow? Cash flow defines how efficiently your money moves throughout your business. Manual accounting slows down the process of getting paid on time.
Integrated payment systems, on the other hand, help you get paid more quickly, increasing your cash flow. With an integrated payment system, payments are automatically entered in your general ledger and account receivable. The result? You get paid on time, making financial management much easier for you.
Integrated payment systems strengthen security.
Safeguarding your data is critical to the security of your business as a whole. Personal information like account information serves as a valuable asset to fraudsters and cybercriminals. Integrated payments offer software, hardware, and services that ensure secure payments and transactions. They should also provide the latest in PCI-compliant, point-to-point encryption and tokenization, and EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) chip-card acceptance. End-to-end encryption secures the data in motion or data in-flight while tokenization effectively guards data at rest. Together, these services offer a higher standard of security along with improved accessibility and better visibility into your business operations.
How can we help?
Integrated payment systems help in eliminating the hassle of manual accounting and offering your customers seamless user experiences. At North American Bancard, we are focused on delivering integrated payment systems that simplify the payment process easier for businesses.
