Top ways to adopt contactless payments

The continuous growth of eCommerce and online shopping has led to the increase in the use of online payment systems, which has led to the introduction of contactless payments. The pandemic situation further boosted the already expanding digital payment system. Keeping safety concerns in mind, more and more people started turning to contactless payments to make their purchases. However, that was not all. Consumers and merchants are still continuing to adopt the trend of contactless payment post covid. There has been a lot of innovation and adoption since the global pandemic took place. The online payment systems have brought immense joy to both customers and retailers. Contactless payments are breaking through and are an emerging solution for all businesses to drive their business smoothly and maintain a strong customer base.

What are contactless payments?

Any payment method that doesn’t require the customer to get in touch with the merchant for making payments is contactless. It is a safe and secure payment method that uses NFC (Near-Field Communication) or RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to accept payments from customers. Several examples of contactless payments are UPI payments, tap and pay, payment links, etc. All these accounts for the best online payment methods.

Benefits of Contactless Payment 

• Online payment solutions have a very positive effect on the digital economy, as it offers a lot of benefits to the customer and the business. 
• It provides a more sanitized purchasing experience to the customers by allowing minimum contact between the merchant and the consumer. 
• Online payment processing helps make the checkout process easier and faster. It adds benefit for both the customer and the merchant. It reduces the long queue and saves time for the customers, and since everything is digital, there are fewer chances of errors for the merchants.

What are the ways to adopt contactless payments?

Some of the most effective ways of adopting contactless payments are:

• Accepting payments through websites: If, as a business owner, you have a website, then your customers can easily purchase your products from the website and make the payment there itself. For online payment acceptance via the website, you will have to integrate your website with a payment gateway like Zaakpay. When your customers will click on the checkout button, they will be redirected to the payment gateway. From there, they can choose from among the 100+ payment methods to make their payment. Zaakpay also ensures a smooth transaction for your customers, which will help you to a great extent in retaining old customers and attracting new ones. 

• Accepting payments through mobile applications: Similar to purchases via websites, many businesses have customized mobile apps. This is a great way of going contactless for accepting payments as it is much easier for customers to make purchases using their mobiles than using any other device like laptops or computers. Mobile apps allow customers to buy and pay for a product in one place, which ensures customer convenience, eliminating the need for customers to come in physical proximity with the merchant. You can offer several online payment solutions to your customer at checkout for accepting their payments.

• Payment links: Payment link is one of the simplest and quickest options for merchants and customers because new businesses do not have the leverage to start a new website or a mobile application. So, providers like Zaakpay allow the merchant to send a payment link to the customer via SMS or email. Once the customer clicks on the link, they get redirected to the payment page, where they can see the amount and pay it instantly in a hassle-free manner. Payment links accept all kinds of payment methods, such as Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Net Banking, UPI, etc. 

• Scan and Pay: Scanning a QR code and paying is becoming one of the best online payment solutions because of its user convenience and ease. In addition, it is a cost-effective way of online payment acceptance. As a merchant, you can just print your QR code on a paper and keep it at a visible and accessible distance for the customer. All they have to do is scan the code with their mobile phones and make the payment. This method again eliminates the need for a customer to come in close contact with the merchant while ensuring a proper cash flow for the business owner.

• Tap and Pay: This is another excellent way of adopting contactless payments though it has some limitations. For example, as a merchant, you will have to invest in a POS terminal to facilitate tap and pay contactless payments. On the other hand, your customers can use this method only if their bill amount up to INR 2,000. Nevertheless, tap and pay is a great way of making contactless payments for small transactions. It works when a customer taps a payment card on a POS terminal equipped with contactless payment technology. It uses the NFC technology in which when a customer taps their card anywhere near the card reader, the chip in the card sends a code via radio waves, and the transaction is completed. 

• Mobile Wallets: Like physical wallets allow you to carry liquid cash, mobile or digital wallets allow you to carry cash digitally. These wallets are growing in popularity because they have eased out the transaction process to a great deal. Customers just need to link their bank accounts with these wallets, and whenever they initiate a digital transaction through the app, money gets deducted from their bank account. This again has eliminated the need of exchanging physical cash. Because of its convenience and security, more and more people are using mobile wallets for carrying out contactless transactions. Hence, initiating online payment processing through mobile wallets is yet another excellent way of adopting contactless payments for your business.

Conclusion

With the increasing popularity of the above contactless methods of accepting payments, there remains no doubt that businesses should adopt these methods to expand their customer base. While online payment security is a concern, but with systems like tokenization, PCI DSS compliant payment gateways like Zaakpay, etc., the security of online payments is set to tighten. Therefore, the need for businesses to adopt contactless payments is more urgent now than it was ever before.