Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge in many parts of the country. However, while consumer fears and buying reluctance continue to be prevalent, shoppers remain in need of products and services of all types. Making shopping safer and easier through the use of contactless card readers is one step your business can take that can benefit both you and your customers alike.
What are contactless payments?
No doubt, you have already seen this technology in action and may have even used it yourself. Touchless payments are made possible through chips embedded in credit cards or near-frequency communication (NFC) technology in smartphones, wearable devices, and point of sale processing equipment. In the simplest terms, a customer waves, taps, or places their chip- or NFC-enabled card or device within two inches of your mobile card reader to initiate the payment process. Within two or three seconds, identity authentication, verification, and acceptance all occur.
The benefits of contactless payments for consumers.
As the pandemic continues to rage and stress levels reach all-time highs, it’s no wonder that people want to get their shopping done by the fastest, safest, and most secure means possible. Just look at the many ways touchless payments help meet this need.
- Hygiene. Thanks to the wallets built into smartphones that securely store payment information and the NFC capabilities that make easy interfacing possible, buyers never need to actually touch contaminated cash or even lay their hands on your card reader. Additionally, the speed of the payment process means that lines at the cash register move fast, making physical distancing between shoppers possible.
- Flexibility. In fact, transactions do not need to be limited to the checkout area of your store. With mobile contactless readers, you or your staff can take buyers’ payments from the sales floor, at the curb, in a pop-up shop, or even at the buyer’s home.
- Security. Contactless payments may be fast and appear almost slapdash, but there is an underlying security infrastructure that protects them. For one thing, the data stored in your customers’ digital wallets is encrypted. Furthermore, the dialogue between the consumer’s device and your reader will be masked from hackers via certified, point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and the very latest in single-use tokenization.
There is another more subtle benefit that customers may not even consciously register. When you demonstrate your commitment to their health and safety by accepting contactless payments, you are showing them in a tangible way that you care about their well-being. When given a choice between buying from a competing store that has not gone the extra mile in this way and yours, this distinction may prove to be what ultimately makes the buyer into one of your loyal patrons.
If someone offered you a way to streamline your sales process without sacrificing security, would you take it? If making this upgrade would help customers to feel safe about buying your products as opposed to those of your competitors, wouldn’t you jump at the chance? There is no time like the present to join the contactless payments revolution.
