Do You Accept Mobile Payments? 4 Reasons You Should

Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) systems are booming. What used to be a niche market is quickly reaching not just big businesses in every industry, but the heart of the small business marketplace. Starbucks generated more than $1 billion in revenue in sales with mobile payments in 2013. According to Business Insider, total mobile payments in the United States last year totaled $30 billion—that’s billion with a “b.”

So is this something that can make a difference for your business?

Whether you own a retail store, a home-based business, or anything in between, there’s a good chance the answer is “Yes!”

First, let’s clarify exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about mPOS. You’re familiar with the Point of Sale (POS)—the place where the transaction actually happens. POS systems developed to manage this important part of your business: totaling bills, swiping cards, exchanging cash, delivering receipts. You and your customers see and use these systems every day.

Related: What Do I Need to Know About Sales Tax

But mPOS is the next step forward. While POS systems are installed and limited to a single physical location—checkout lines, front desks, etc.—mPOS goes wherever your mobile device goes. And with the explosion of smartphones and tablets (and whatever might be coming next), more businesses are able to not only use mPOS systems, but even use them exclusively.

So what are some of the most important ways Mobile Point of Sale solutions can help a business owner?

Sell Anywhere

A huge advantage of an mPOS system is being able to finalize a transaction anywhere. Not only are you not limited to completing the sale at the checkout line, but you’re not even limited to staying in your place of business. The whole point of a Mobile Point of Sale system is that it comes with you–as long as you bring your mobile device with you, you can do business.

If you’re on the road, meeting with a customer—you can close the sale right then and there. If you’ve set up a booth at a conference or community event, you’re already set up to take payments. Anywhere your customers are, anywhere you can go, you can do business there. There’s no need to call information in, to carry equipment around to set up, or anything at all beyond just having the mobile device that you likely are carrying around anyway!

Streamlined Sales Process

Mobile POS systems give businesses another edge by streamlining the sales process. Now the employee who is working with a customer to find the solution to their problem and helping them find what they need is the same employee who can finalize the transaction. mPOS cuts out the step of the customer migrating toward the checkout area, waiting in line, and instead gets the deal done on the spot. Your salesperson is now able to double as your cashier.

Build Your Customer Database

When customers check out using mPOS, they have the option to get their receipt by email. As customers give you their contact information, then, you can also give them the option to get on your email list for future marketing campaigns. So your Mobile Point of Sale system is helping build your customer database for drip marketing, helping you know who your customers are and what they’re looking for.

Related: Consultant’s Corner – Drip Marketing

Clear Up Your Store Space

For retail businesses in particular, mPOS makes a big impact on the way you use your space. In a traditional store, you need to reserve space for a checkout area, and then clear lanes for lines of people waiting to check out–lines that can build up at a moment’s notice into a long queue, so you have to design your space around those possibilities. With mPOS, you can change the way you are using space. For example, you can set up checkout stations around the store, decentralizing the checkout process and avoiding having huge crowds all bottlenecked at one spot. Or you can put the checkout process in the hands of your employees on the floor, making it easy to get customers checked out as they get what they need without any need to go anywhere. This gives you more options for how you use your space to your best advantage.

These are just four ways a business benefits from using a Mobile Point of Sale system—but that’s not the end of the story! Come back next Wednesday as we discuss how mPOS makes life better for your customers, too.

Also, click below to learn more about the new mobile payment system from Bluefin Payments and GoSmallBiz.com.

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