Digital payments are the future of money transactions, but how do you convince your customers, partners, and employees to adopt them? In this article, you will learn some effective strategies to promote digital payments in your business and benefit from their convenience, security, and efficiency.
Before you start promoting digital payments, you need to understand who your target audience is and what their needs, preferences, and pain points are. Different segments of your audience may have different motivations, barriers, and expectations when it comes to using digital payments. For example, some may value speed and convenience, while others may be concerned about security and privacy. Some may be familiar with digital payment options, while others may need more education and guidance. By understanding your audience, you can tailor your promotion strategy to address their specific concerns and benefits.
Collecting feedback from your customers and researching the payments market in the geos you operate is key to understand your audience. 1. Customer support tickets (e.g. Zendesk), 2. sales tickets for B2B (e.g. Hubspot), 3. Social Media comments, 4. customer interviews and surveys; can all be great sources of information. From there you can position digital payments by addressing a customer need-based value proposition. E.g. "I want more security"--> "Pay with our temporary virtual card, and forget about fraudsters.; "I value convenience the most"--> Forget about your wallet, and pay "with Google Pay/Apple Pay/Samsung Pay"
One of the main reasons why people may hesitate to use digital payments is a lack of awareness or knowledge. Therefore, it is important to educate and inform your audience about the advantages and features of digital payments, as well as how to use them safely and effectively. You can use various channels and formats to deliver your educational content, such as blogs, videos, podcasts, webinars, newsletters, social media, and infographics. You can also use testimonials, case studies, and success stories to showcase how digital payments have helped other businesses or customers achieve their goals.
Pushing and incentivizing new payment methods relies deeply on trust. When people pay, they are putting their money at stake, so they need to trust that your payment method and your companies' security layers are bullet proof. Testimonials from other users/companies that use it are very powerful, as well as building viral loops where people can get to the point where a friend or family relative recommends the specific payment method. E.g. In Brazil and Mexico, most citizens choose their financial institution based on a friend or family recommendation.
Another way to promote digital payments is to offer incentives and rewards to your audience for using them. For example, you can provide discounts, cashbacks, loyalty points, coupons, or freebies to customers who pay with digital methods. You can also create referral programs, contests, or gamification elements to encourage your audience to share and recommend digital payments to others. Additionally, you can reward your employees or partners for adopting digital payments by giving them bonuses, recognition, or training opportunities.
Other incentives, not cash-burning, are very powerful when thinking about promoting digital payments. For example, Infoless Cards - physical cards with no sensitive information -prevent users from using their physical cards at online stores (they cannot see the card number), pushing users to use virtual cards. Although rewards and bonuses work, changing habits requires an extra layer of incentives mechanism
Cashback offers are a very effective way to get customers to use digital payments and some customers specifically look for stores where they can use mobile wallets that give them cash back on their purchases.
One of the key benefits of digital payments is that they can simplify and streamline your business processes and operations. However, to achieve this, you need to ensure that your digital payment system is easy to use, reliable, and compatible with your existing systems and platforms. You also need to provide clear and consistent instructions, policies, and support for your audience to use digital payments without any hassle or confusion. By simplifying and streamlining your digital payment system, you can improve your customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, as well as your operational efficiency and productivity.
When thinking about changing payment methods within your business, you really need to think around conciliation and transactional reporting. When changing any financial/accounting process, ensure that you do a test run, transactions are easy to match, and after your team and employees feel comfortable with the new payment system, then start rolling out. Else you might fall in a place where reconciliation becomes too tough and the simplicity promised by digital payments becomes a nightmare.
Finally, one of the most effective ways to promote digital payments is to demonstrate and lead by example. You can show your audience how you use digital payments in your own business and how they have improved your performance, profitability, and reputation. You can also partner with other businesses or organizations that use digital payments and leverage their credibility and influence. By demonstrating and leading with digital payments, you can build trust, confidence, and credibility with your audience and inspire them to follow your footsteps.
Besides leading by example of yourself, bringing over some testimonials from other customers can help amplify the message and get better outcomes.
There are several Reddit forums that focus on specific mobile wallets. If your store supports mobile payments, you might want to consider participating in those forums.