India’s retail sector was worth $836 billion in FY 2022, with a staggering 81.5 percent contribution from traditional retail, organized brick-and-mortar retail makes up 12 percent of the overall retail market, followed by online sales channels at 6.5 percent. These statistics mean that offline retail is here to stay.

 

India’s retail sector was worth $836 billion in FY 2022, with a staggering 81.5 percent contribution from traditional retail, organized brick-and-mortar retail makes up 12 percent of the overall retail market, followed by online sales channels at 6.5 percent. These statistics mean that offline retail is here to stay.

Let’s understand this with the help of an example:

You are a multi-chain retail owner always thinking about offering a smooth, convenient and personalized shopping experience for your customers across your multiple outlets/stores. You may have a great product, but a bad customer experience will result in customers forgetting about your product and remembering only the poor experience. Turning a first-time buyer into a loyal customer is the key for retail.

There are multiple parts in a customer journey and a seamless checkout experience is one of the crucial ones. Improving transaction efficiency and offering a seamless purchase experience for customers has become imperative for retail stores.

Let’s take a deep dive to understand how an integrated payments POS solution can benefit your business:

1. Deeply integrated payment solution, error-free process and reduced transaction time.

With a regular non-integrated payment machine, the processes are manual and cumbersome, mostly with limited payment options and higher checkout time. This increases the time taken for operational processes including that for reconciliation, payment processing for various modes via separate devices, total checkout time etc.

An integrated payment solution has features such as existing billing system integration, auto reconciliation, automated reports all of which help in streamlining the payment processes. It enhances the operational efficiency of the sales and finance teams by eliminating manual errors, and cutting down on the time spent in manual reconciliation and payment transaction reporting. More so, multiple payment options under a single system make the checkout process smooth and swift.

 

2. Meeting the Increased Demand for Digital Payment Solutions

Meeting customer expectations is getting tougher by the day. To add to that, providing the convenience of all payment modes requires individual alliances with each payment company which is tedious and cumbersome to maintain.

This brought about the demand for a single platform that not only accepted all traditional payment methods, but also new age digital payment modes such as QR code, UPI, SMS Pay, etc including integrated affordability solutions.

3. Consistent Omni Channel Experience

Consistent customer experience across touchpoints is equally crucial for brand loyalty. It is important to give customers the same swift journey, be it in-store or during delivery. With Integrated Payment Solution, retailers can facilitate all kinds of payments across all offline touchpoints --at the billing counter, anywhere within the store/branch, at kiosks, at customer’s doorstep, and remotely (SMS-based payment).

4. Faster Checkout and scale business

There is a saying "The best form of customer service is self-service”. When it comes to checkout, customers expect that it should be fast and super easy without having to wait for a long time to complete the transaction.

Wth integrated solutions, you can either add a self-checkout point for such customers or offer a quick yet assisted payment experience using a queue busting solution which in turn relieves pressure on the billing desk and also supports to increase and scale the business.

5. Single Customer view and analytics

When there are multiple PSPs involved, there is no single window of information to view customer & transaction details for offline & online payments. This in turn requires more time and effort for reconciliation and payouts.

With integrated POS solutions, it is possible to integrate with PSPs for online payments to create one portal for merchants to view online & offline payments, thereby creating a single customer & transaction view for all transactions across outlets. Furthermore, the auto-reconciliation feature helps in generating the payout reports from bank (for offline & online payments) and helps you avail a single reconciled file of the transactions.

6. Tapping into new business models, scale and stay ahead of competition

There has been a complete shift in customer behaviors regarding different forms of shopping. Customers today prefer options such as BOPIS (Buy Online Pick up Instore), BORIS (Buy Online Return in Store), etc which puts lots of pressure on the business to meet such demands. Due to this shift in behavior, businesses have to adopt the latest technologies to stay ahead of their competitors.

There has been a complete shift in customer behaviors regarding different forms of shopping. Customers today prefer options such as BOPIS (Buy Online Pick up Instore), BORIS (Buy Online Return in Store), etc which puts lots of pressure on the business to meet such demands. Due to this shift in behavior, businesses have to adopt the latest technologies to stay ahead of their competitors.

Integrated payments solutions make it possible for your customers to return items conveniently and get easy refunds thereby creating a seamless “return in-store” experience.

To sum up…

Every business resorts to technology backed solutions for streamlining processes in order to scale and grow. Similarly, a technology backed payment platform provides multiple benefits under one umbrella such as a variety of payment options including deviceless solutions, value added services such as affordability solutions, automated settlements, reporting and analytics, payment related insights for your business and customers, and many more. It helps you transform your payments from mere acceptance to a seamless experience!

Prasana Kumar Parthasarathy - Director, Customer Solutions, Ezetap by Razorpay