The upheaval caused by the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 is deeply felt and seen by everyone, including the consumer and businesses. A lot of things changed in this period, especially during 2020, when most things went through a necessary transformation both work-wise and life-wise. Something that was truly revolutionized was the payments industry. Payments are nothing as they looked like before 2020, and there are a lot of reasons for the same.
In 2Some say that it’s the rising popularity of ecommerce and excessive digitization that payments have also been transformed in the same way, while others opine that this change was already in progress. The pandemic simply catalyzed it.
We have a list of key changes that occurred in 2020 in the business payments industry. If you’re a local business or sell online, you must make a note of the following.
Omni-channel Payments
The modern consumer doesn’t believe in paying through a standard mode anymore. As the modes of purchasing diversified, the modes of payments have also diversified.
People now shop on their laptops, smartphones, tablets and sometimes hop into a physical store as well. With so many shopping avenues, the businesses have to mold their offerings accordingly. Businesses have to be smart enough to understand the shopping behaviors exhibited by customers on so many different channels.
Payor offers a number of payment modes for businesses to stay active on all such payment avenues. We call it Omni-channel payments which enable businesses go beyond just digital checkout and credit cards.
You can easily guess that yoFor instance, NFC payments really shone through the entire pandemic phase. The contact-less technology minimize the risk of physically interacting at stores or the gas station, enabling everyone to pay securely and safely. Such an innovation made thousands of businesses aware of what they needed to do to keep up with the changing payments ecosystem.
The same can be also said about Apple Pay. A lot of businesses, prior to the pandemic, didn’t have the provision to pay using Apple Pay. Our own customer data suggests that a huge chunk of businesses adopted Apple Pay using Payor for accepting quick payments from iOS users.
QR Code Payments
Omnichannel payments are created for the very purpose of centralization. You don’t have to log in to 5 different payment platforms to track your earnings. Many If the research carried out by Juniper is to be believed, QR payments will literally rule the online payment industry due to their ease of use in the next 5 years. It already is seeing an 11% boost of new users in the North American markets. Therefore, there are enough signs to be believe that QR payments will become even more popular in the coming years. Given their intuitive design and camera enabled devices around the world, it only make sense to offer QR payments at your store or online.
Most mobile payment apps such as Samsung Pay are QR enabled. You just have to scan the code with your mobile device and poof, your payment will be handled automatically. It doesn’t get any smoother than this!
Mobile Payments
Mobile payments are totally game in 2021 and times to come. You would have noticed this – more people who own smartphones have stopped carrying their wallets, simply because their smartphone now carries most of their financial information. This change has kick-started the era of mobile wallets. This enables both the consumers and businesses to accept payments with extended ease. They don’t have to carry plastic money most of the time or panic if they forgot their wallets at home.
For instance, a study reported that mobile app wallet downloads in the US jumped from 38% to 55% soon after the pandemic hit. Furthermore, pay-by-link has also started to trend under the mobile payments regime witnessing an ever-expanding rise in popularity.
In fact, we have noticed this at Payor; more businesses than ever were signing up to be ready for accepting mobile payments. The trend only goes on to tell that we’ll be seeing more mobile wallets being launched in the times to come and more businesses will have the option of paying by mobile.
If your business also wants to accept payments by mobile wallet, you can sign up for an account with Payor, and get started in no time. We’re facilitating mobile payments across the country!
Social media payments
Social media shopping is the obvious trend that was waiting to explode all these years. Instagram and Facebook has a user base which is more than 2 billion users, and it was not late until they wanted to monetize it for shopping. Today, more users follow brands on social media than ever and businesses are not shy of using this trend to exploit ecommerce opportunities.
Several survey carried out during the 2020 pandemic have proved that people have a deep affection with finding and buying from brands on social media. Rather, people use social influencers as their online shopping discovery instruments to stay in-trend!
In case, you have not explored Social Media for selling products or running social media focused advertisements yet, it’s time for you to delve into this fast-expanding shopping space.
Conclusion
As we have seen that the shopping world as we know it is changing wildly. The pandemic simply turned shoppers hazy and unaware of how to proceed, resulting in a diverse environment where online and offline are submerging with each other. While this was inevitable to happen for the consumers, it has become a real challenge for the businesses. They have to be more aware and alert of how to best their sales, marketing and payments for the best results. Currently, businesses are still in the transformation phase of their digital journey.
In 2021, a majority of small businesses in the country have realized the power of digital payments and shifted to payment partners such as Payor for accepting payments across the board. Many businesses that are considered High-risk and unfit for online payment processing are still on their way to adopt new-age payment methods. If you’re one of them, you should kick-start your payment processing journey today with Payor. Let our customer success teams take you towards a freer payment experience today!
