Local businesses should stay away from bank payments

Technology is making the lives of business owners and service providers more convenient, capital-efficient, and more user-friendly than traditional banking. This is especially true when it comes to how your business receives payments. Let’s take a closer look at why local businesses - especially service providers - stand to save time and money by using the secure and speedy technology of today. To gain a better understanding of this, let’s try using an example.

Meet Joe, who relies on bank transfers to get paid

Joe runs a roofing repair and replacement company, a very skilled and specialised service. When a roof leaks, Joe needs to purchase the materials he needs very quickly and perform the repairs within a short timeframe.

When it comes to getting paid for the work done, Joe relies on bank transfers. Because of this, the money he is owed after completing a job isn't always in his bank account immediately. Customers might take days (and some chasing!) before they make the effort to complete the bank transfer. Some put in the wrong amount, or mistype the account details - both of which delay the moment when Joe finally receives his money.

Because of the urgency of the repairs he needs to do, Joe needs to buy supplies and materials for his next jobs quickly - he can't wait around for the cash to land in his bank account! In the event of a big storm, things get even worse! Joe has many leaking roofs to fix at once, but he simply doesn't have the money he needs to buy his supplies - just yet. His business suffers because once all his money becomes tied up in payments to suppliers and other expenses, and what he earned with recent jobs hasn't appeared in his bank account yet, Joe has to turn down work. Nobody is willing to wait 3 days with a leaky roof, and because of this Joe sometimes receives less than amicable reviews.

This may seem like a situation that is unique to a particular service or trade, but the fact is that it is not. You see, this is a problem that is very common among smaller, local services that not only rely on reviews to bring in more business but also end up with payments being held by banks, or delayed because customers can be forgetful.

So what difference does it make to use a modern finance application like Fuzey to sort out your payments? Let’s explore it.

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Meet Jack, who uses modern payment technologies

Jack got sick of having to chase customers, waiting days or weeks for payments, and losing business because of these needless cash flow problems. So he now uses a modern-day solution to collect payments from his customers. His payments settle in his bank account far faster than Joe’s, and he doesn't need to waste time chasing customers for money he's owed. In fact, because he is able to collect his money as soon as each job is finished, when the same storm that overwhelmed Joe’s business hit their city, Jack was able to scale up. He met the demands of all of his customers and was able to provide prompt, efficient service.

Because of this, he received great customer reviews which will work for months if not years to bring in more work. When there were too many jobs for his crew to complete alone, he was able to quickly scale up and grow his business.

It can be a little tricky for business owners to see how the ability to put your money out faster translates into more capital flowing in. For local businesses, however, the ability to receive payments quickly, in a centralised and organised manner, is not just convenient, but critical to success and to achieving growth.

Fuzey's Pay with Bank feature helps local businesses collect the money they're owed instantly, and with close to zero fees.

Jack simply sends a text to the customer including a payment link. The customer clicks on the link and is redirected to her mobile banking application to approve the transaction. The payment amount and Jack's account details are already there, so he doesn't need to share them with the customer and the customer doesn't need to type them in correctly for the payment to be successful.

And just like that - the money is in Jack's account. And only 20p were taken as a fee - did you know that credit card fees are close to 3% of the transaction value? That's a lot of money!

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Want to be like Jack? Book a demo with us filling the form below and start collecting instant payments now!

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