{"id":966,"date":"2024-04-22T03:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smallbusiness.hrblock.com\/?p=189"},"modified":"2024-04-22T14:33:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T20:33:19","slug":"3-reasons-why-your-business-must-support-electronic-transactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blockadvisors.com\/resource-center\/small-business-services\/3-reasons-why-your-business-must-support-electronic-transactions\/","title":{"rendered":"3 reasons why your business must support electronic transactions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paying for goods or services with a credit card has been standard practice for decades now. We’ve been handing over (or swiping) plastic at retail stores and reading 16-digit numbers over the phone for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the World Wide Web came along, major vendors saw a new, global platform for selling their wares. They were already accepting plastic in stores or by mail order, so they were in a good position to transfer those systems over to their websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small businesses, too, saw the potential for online sales. They could make their products available to anyone in the world. But accepting payment in any fashion beyond a check or money order was difficult. And that limited their sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their only real options for accepting credit cards was to try to get a merchant account through their bank, or by piggybacking on a service like Teleflora. The internet was so new, though, and some financial institutions were still wary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PayPal made waves in the small business online payment world when it launched in 1998. Individuals and companies could easily send and receive funds via a credit card or bank account to a friend or family member \u2013 or as payment to a business for a product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon, there were more options. Financial software developers started offering payment solutions to their users. Payment “gateways” like Square, Stripe, and Authorize.net emerged. Integrated with merchant accounts, they could be used alone or integrated with accounting software and websites. Vendors started selling small card-swipers that could be clipped onto a smartphone or tablet to process mobile payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So today, whether you’re selling pottery at a small craft fair booth or ringing up sales on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show, you’ll have multiple options \u2013 with multiple fee schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Numerous services<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The financial transaction processing field is a competitive one. It can also be confusing. You’ll choose a supplier \u2013 or suppliers \u2013 that’s best for your specific business needs, whether you accept credit cards on your website, within your accounting software, over the phone, or at remote locations. The players are the same sometimes, but you may be dealing with multiple service providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And deal with them you must. Accepting credit cards \u2013 and in some cases, direct funds transfers \u2013 is a given in 2015. This ability offers numerous benefits, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n