Charging and billing customers challenges business owners who are facing difficulties, but technological advancement created various social online payments and solutions accessible to consumers.
These social online payments can easily integrate into your e-commerce site or social media for ease of billing. What’s more, this feature invites more buyers, manage quicker payment, and provide a safe space for all parties on each purchase they make to your business.
First, what are social online payments?
Social online payment is using online and social media to transfer cash to someone else for payment of purchase, loan, and more. Examples of social payments are PayPal, Google Wallet, and Apple Pay.
Social online payment usually links the customer’s or debit or credit card to the payment’s channel. The payment channel often serves as a third-party account connected to a seller.
If the consumer decides to make a purchase, the online payment channel deducts money from the account and pass through the system back to the seller. Payment channels are usually encrypted and highly secured.
Advantages of social online payments
Are you using online payments for your customers? Learn how this feature benefits your business or personal affairs.
Ease and fast
Social payment allows things as easy as pressing a button to swap money. Usually, the transaction is exchanged within a day or minutes. The service allows repayment convenient for an individual. For instance, businesses may opt to let customers pay in advance and just have the product delivered or served in the store.
Going cashless
There are plenty of reasons why people don’t want to strap their wallets full of cash. For instance, (1) it adds weight in their bag or wallet, (2) they want to keep it safe at home or in a bank, (3) or, they just don’t want to use it. Using social online payments makes you pay for all the transactions you’ve made without taking out your wallet.
Direct credit pay
Want to pay via credit card but too afraid to take it out? Social payments allow you to link your credit cards without the risk of losing them or forgetting card details. You can read how third-party payment channels store your card information and keep them safe.
E-commerce use
Businesses with no physical address can charge customers via social online payments and have their goods delivered via downloads, email, or mail. Online stores such as Etsy, Amazon, and Ebay follow this trend – even small startup businesses can integrate this feature to lessen costs.
Low-risk of embezzlement
Social payments go straight into your account and balance can be calculated right there, right then. This shows that it has a low-risk of getting embezzled during the process.
Downsides of using online payments
While social online payments have low-risk of embezzlement, security is still one factor people are concerned about. One downside to using these third-party payment channels is the concern of breaching private data and privacy.
Users link their bank, credit card, and address and this breach of privacy can cause alarm for users.
Scammers are turning to online payments as well and can inject some malware to copy your information. You need to think about security measures before using any online payments.
One last downside we can think about is the margin for error is quite common. Did you punch the numbers right? Were you able to get the full name of the customer? Before sending or receiving cash from partners and consumers, make sure to get their info right.
Additional information
Make your website Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant
The PCI DSS mandates security standards for sites that make use of accredited credit cards from fraud. The mandate has a set of practices one can follow to protect credit card data. With e-commerce sites, it’s also best to use third-party payment integrators like Stripe to store your customers’ credit card info. That way, attackers can’t steal their data and wreak havoc on your payment system.
PCI DSS compliance is a requirement. All e-commerce sites should follow the mandate when instilling better practices with online payment. Your payment processor, as mentioned above, can even help you with your PCI DSS compliance.
