Many businesses nowadays decide to go electronic in order to enable their customers to place order online. These organisations should be aware of the existing payment systems available on the internet today along with some issues related to them.
Offline payment
Often time, e-businesses fail to accommodate all types of their customers in paying the orders they placed online. Alternative for this situation is by providing customers with the options to pay offline, such as by sending cheques to the company in case that the customers have no credit card account. Company that apply this policy is Amazon.com
Credit card
Credit card is the most popular payment system in online environment, but unfortunately, most people in this world do not possess any credit card account. The other issue that need to be considered is: credit card always requires a minimum purchase of $10-$15 for a transaction; therefore, purchases in small amount of money are not suitable for credit card.
Electronic cash: pay pal
Almost everybody in this world can create a PayPal account as long as he / she possesses a bank account with particular bsb number. PayPal charges fee for each transaction made online and there is definitely no minimum purchase amount policy made by this payment system. Unfortunately, not every e-business on internet accepts payment using PayPal. Often time, some PayPal customers may find themselves disappointed at the end of the transaction discovering that the company they are doing business with do not accept PayPal account.
So, are you satisfied with the online payment system available today? Any suggestions on how the future online payment system would be?
Other related topics:
How does E-business differ from traditional business?
Selling on the web: Can we sell everything online?
How does e-business earn money online?
Filed under: E-Business, Payment system, Selling on internet | Tagged: credit card, E-Business, E-Commerce, ebusiness, ecommerce, offline payment, pay pal, Payment system, Selling on internet, Selling on the web
Well.. Business which not accept paypal is sometime a little bit suspicious. Because paypal system designed properly to protect its customer (buyer) from credit card fraud.
@Hardy: Reasonable thought…. I have heard plenty cases talking about credit card fraud. I feel disappointed sometimes when I find that some websites do not accept pay pal.
I think as someone that owns a website it is important to offer as many payment options as possible. I own an online large format printing service in which I offer my customers the ability to send in a check, pay by credit card directly on the site as well as via PayPal. Initially I only offered the first two but when i started offering PayPal immediately a decent percentage of my customers opted for PayPal instead. I think it told me the importance of empowering the customer with as much as is reasonably possilbe which in turn helps conversions.