4 Reasons Why Your Small Business Should Accept Credit Cards

If your small business is not yet accepting credit cards as payment, you’re probably leaving money on the table. From convenience to cash flow, here are four great reasons why accepting credit cards will benefit both you and your customers.

Small Businesses Save Time and Money While Improving Customer Experience

You can save both time and money when you accept credit cards, while improving the experience your customers have with your business. It’s a competitive world, and allowing your customers to pay the way they want is a huge differentiator.

Think about how you, as a small business, prefer to pay for everyday items or services you receive. Likely it’s by whipping out your credit or debit card. Not only are you able to earn reward points from your credit card issuer, but it’s also much easier than remembering your routing and account number, or carrying around cash or checks. If your small business doesn’t accept credit cards, your customers won’t find it as easy to do business with you. Need more convincing? According to Community Merchants USA, research shows that businesses can increase their sales by more than double when they start accepting credit cards.[i]

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Small Businesses Increase Cash Flow while Shortening Funding Times

Increasing cash flow is important for business growth, and adding credit card acceptance is a surefire way to increase cash and speed up the time it takes for your business to get paid. The funding time for most credit card payments is typically much faster than other payment methods like ACH or check. When you accept a credit card payment on Monday, you can expect to see the funds in your bank account by Wednesday. That means more money in your bank account at any given time.

Avoid Stress by Streamlining Your Small Business Payment Processes

Credit card transactions give your business an immediate response that nearly ‘guarantees’ the funds will settle into your account. When your business processes a credit card payment you will receive an automatic response, known as an “authorization,” letting you know if the payment is going to be successful or not. Compared to ACH, accepting credit cards provides a lot more cash flow security when you can count on the funds depositing as expected. An added benefit is that your business can swipe credit card transactions, as compared to the manual entry required for processing ACH payments.

Protect Your Small Business Against Unfair Payment Disputes

We hope that your business never has to deal with a payment dispute, but if you do, credit card disputes are much easier to manage and potentially win than ACH or check disputes. If a customer disputes a credit card charge, your business will have the opportunity to provide receipts and authorization documents to the credit card processor so that they can determine if the transaction was properly authorized. The ACH dispute process is much less flexible.

These benefits make accepting credit card payments a solution that your business shouldn’t live without. If you knew there was a solution to a business challenge that would keep your customers happy, improve the cash you have in the bank, and save time and hassle—wouldn’t you jump at it? Activating credit card acceptance can do all that, and more.