The content of this article is provided for informational purposes only. You should always obtain independent business, tax, financial, and legal advice before making any business decision.
Broadening your payment options is one of the simplest and most effective ways to reach new audiences. As the world continues to embrace online shopping, it’s a low effort way to maximise the opportunities waiting just over the horizon.
To say that the pandemic made paying for goods and services online mainstream is, well, an understatement. With customers keeping to their homes and local areas, face-to-face cash payments plummeted as people turned to e-payments instead, joining an already growing online audience.
A survey carried out in 2020 co-organised by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) revealed a rise in online shopping between six and 10 percent across most product categories around the globe1. What does that look like in reality? Well, more than two billion people bought goods or services online in 2020, with e-retail sales reaching more than US$4.2 trillion internationally2. It’s a trend that looks set to continue – and the more you know about getting paid online, the more financially savvy you’ll feel as the digital world grows.
As customers switch steadily to the convenience of digital shopping, ensuring you can add e-payments (or ‘electronic payments’) to your business could be crucial for growth. An e-payment is any financial transaction that is transmitted electronically; just about everything other than cash, cheques and barter. Some you’ll be familiar with, and others may be new – they include:
As the most established online payment method, this barely needs an explanation. Credit cards pay the seller in full, allowing the customer the option of paying the bill in instalments to the credit card company, or the cheaper option of settling the entire debt each month. Each credit card holder has a personal credit limit. Debit card payments deduct the full amount straight from the customer’s bank account when the payment is made
These are mostly used between B2B users. The customer’s bank sends the invoiced amount directly to the supplier’s bank account. Bank transfers are less popular these days but still a critical part of eCommerce.
These are set up through your bank to pay bills in monthly payments or instalments.
Also known as ‘mCommerce’, this is becoming increasingly popular and refers to any online financial transactions made on a mobile device, like a handphone or tablet. It can be used for buying, selling and banking online, as well as paying household bills. In 2021, nearly 70 percent of all retail website visits worldwide were made on smartphones3.
A tool or app that stores your financial details, including bank cards, store loyalty cards and much more. It can be used to pay for almost everything online; from the usual bills, retail or business purchases, to transfers to your family and friends.
Payment service providers (like PayPal) offer an all-in-one payment solution that includes most of the payment methods above4.
Online payments offer many advantages to both your business and your customers, but there are some key benefits.
Increasingly sophisticated encryption and other safety checks offer your customers greater peace of mind. PayPal is compliant with stringent Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards for online payment security, which includes HTTPS and TLS encryption protection. These connections, which wrap an encrypted layer around the basic HTTP protocol (the mechanism that sends data from your web browser to a website) to help prevent hackers reading the information – a vital tool for securing online activities such as shopping and banking5.
In addition, PayPal checks transactions in real time, and accounts are analysed to help prevent fraudulent activity and payments. PayPal also follows up purchases and sales with an email. And if PayPal suspects something is not right, we’ll contact you to check. In certain circumstances, PayPal can also provide buyers6 with a reimbursement if goods do not arrive. Similarly, if sellers7 receive an unauthorised payment or a claim that an item wasn’t received, they may be eligible to keep the full amount.
With millions of PayPal accounts in over 200 markets, you get the chance to access new audiences, find new channels to promote your business and reach the PayPal ‘family’ of customers, who can pay you easily and safely, whether they’re in Birmingham or Barbados.
It’s easy to see why millions of businesses already choose the PayPal Commerce Platform to power their business at home and abroad. When you sign up a Business account with PayPal, we’ll help you manage your enterprise with Buyer and Seller protection on eligible transactions, together with our reporting tools that help you keep track of your growing commercial transactions7. Plus, PayPal offers security fraud protection and dispute resolution to settle buyer-and-seller disputes through a single dashboard (and much more).
Visit PayPal’s Commerce Platform to discover how we can help you to develop your business.
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