How Can SMS Payment Solutions Benefit Your Business?

These days, we are all on the pursuit of leading an independent life, due to which we are always on the go. We are often unavailable at home because of the hard-pressed lifestyle. This causes inconvenience to delivery agents. Delivery Agents often come across situations where no one’s home to accept delivery and are forced to make multiple visits to drop the products, and collect payments. It not only slows down the sales cycle but also affects the productivity of your delivery executives.

As the total time spent by an agent on a customer increases, and the deliveries processed per agent goes down, causing cost implications for retailers who provide the ‘Pay on Delivery’ option.

As a business, you cannot afford that, can you?

To add to that, COVID-19 has raised safety concerns to a level that some societies have stopped delivery agent entries. In a scenario like this giving the customer a seamless doorstep delivery experience and accepting payments, both have become a challenge!

Well, on one hand, you could refuse to offer ‘pay on delivery’ to contain the extra effort and cost to your company. However, not offering such flexibility can further dent customer experience! Especially if all you want is to increase your sales, and you cannot afford to lose a customer.

So, how can you accept ‘payment on delivery’, while the agent cannot meet the customer, and still ensure a great delivery experience, in these times?

By harnessing the power of SMS!

What is SMS Payment?

SMS payment is a way of accepting payments from the customer by sending a text message or an email. You or the agent can send a payment link to the customer from your delivery agent app to their phone. The customer has to open the link and choose the payment mode between net banking, debit/ credit cards, UPI, wallet and make the payment. The agent is able to track the payment in real-time and knows when the customer has made the payment. He can then confidently leave the package at the gate.

How is SMS Payment Useful?

1. Convenience to the Customer

SMS payment takes the convenience of digital payments to the next level. You can request payment from your customer, irrespective of where the customer is. For example, a customer has ordered a gift for his mother from your website. Instead of making the payment on the website itself, he chose ‘Pay on Delivery’. However, the customer is not available at home to make the payment.

During such an instance, you can send a payment request via SMS, and your customer can finish the transaction using any digital payment mode.

In fact, Amazon sends a payment request to customers even before their delivery agent has delivered the product. This eliminates the difficulties involved in cash and doorstep card payment.

2. Higher Agent Efficiency

An efficient delivery process helps you create a positive reputation among the customers and complete a transaction as soon as possible. However, when the customer is unavailable, your delivery agent is compelled to pay multiple visits to the same house when he could have delivered products to other customers.

3. Simplified Payment Collections Process

Adopting remote payment will make it easier for you to accept payments any time and from anywhere. It helps you collect outstanding payments and bills receivables without any obstructions, i.e. you can remind your customer of the amount payable by sending a text message (with the payment link).

4. Boost Sales

Not having the option of payment on delivery, could lead to loss of customers, who prefer to pay on delivery and hence can impact your sales. Offering SMS payments allows you to target customers that prefer payments on delivery as well.

4. Efficient Process

Delivery executives often complain about handling bundles of cash, don’t they? Also, cash management is a major challenge for businesses starting from agencies managing cash for you, then finance teams spending hours on reconciliation of this cash amount versus the order, and to add to that delays in cash settlements, or cost of thefts. With SMS payment, you minimise cash handling, and thus the limitations of it. These digital payments can easily be recorded and reconciled back in the system. It also relieves your agent off the headache of managing cash thereby increasing their efficiency. Accepting payments via text messages is beneficial for both, you and your customer. It offers flexibility and consistent payment experience, irrespective of location. Every delivery business, whether brick and mortar or e-commerce or even services should enable SMS payments.

Which businesses can benefit from accepting SMS payments?

Any businesses which offer doorstep services, including deliveries, collections, or those that give regular monthly/annual services can benefit from installing SMS Payment solution.

Industries include: Food, Apparel, Ecommerce and all forms of Retail for Deliveries, Insurance and Government for doorstep collections, Education / Training Institutes and freelancers for timely remote payment collections.

What Do You Need to Accept SMS Payments?

For large businesses, Ezetap can enable SMS payment along with other digital payment options like card payment, UPI, QR code payment, biometric-enabled payment, etc. via an integrated solution with your existing app, or give you a customised app.

For small stores/ retailers/ freelancers, we offer you a Digital POS on your phone through Ezetap app-based SMS payment solution.

At Ezetap, we are at the forefront of redefining the payment experience. Our SMS payment services enable businesses to send a single SMS payment request to a customer or Bulk SMS payment request to multiple customers in one go. Customers simply click on the ‘Pay Now’ link and land on the payment page. They can utilise a payment instrument of their choice to complete the transaction. Integrate our payment solution that utilises the ubiquity of mobile devices for a seamless payment experience.