Quickbooks recently surveyed 3,500 small business owners globally and discovered that 60% name cash flow as one of the main stressors in running their business. In fact cash flow falls in the top 3% of causes of stress for 76% of small business owners and sees them spending 3-5 hours a week just trying to manage cash flow issues. When you add to this the statistic that as much as a quarter of payments coming in are late, scuppering their ability to meet payments to suppliers etc on time, it becomes clear that solving the cash flow problem is key for fintech companies looking to make a difference in this sector.
İlayda Birol
For small business owners solutions need to provide the following in an attractive and efficient package as possible:
Tracking capabilities – owners need to easily see where money has gone, where it is now and what is coming in, when - with no lag time and no need to drill down.
Automation – everything that can be automated, should be, from taking and making payments, to setting up future and repeat payments, to updating accounting tools, managing team accounts, creating reports… the more automation the better.
Integration (two-ways) – the ability to integrate already-familiar tools to a new app or platform means less time spent re-learning or recreating processes. Also, integrating the new tool itself must be absolutely frictionless and even pleasurable. Time is money.
What changed? What a question!
The global pandemic made touching cash, POS machines - and each other in the exchange – hugely problematic almost overnight. Small businesses that didn’t yet take contactless payments had to move quickly to keep their businesses viable. Luckily, crisis breeds innovation and agile fintech companies moved swiftly to meet these new and urgent needs.
For small businesses everywhere the requirements for survival were that taking payments needed to be possible anytime, anywhere without contact, without the necessity of a shared device, at the absolute lowest to none at all cost and – above all – instantly.
Has the problem been solved?
We think so. In our last article we talked about the huge benefits to business owners of introducing QR tech in payments. The bottom line is that QR makes payments instant, and possible anywhere. This means that, for example, if a customer makes a payment to you by scanning your QR code on a menu in your café two cities away, that payment and every other from every other menu arrives in your business account instantly (truly instantly) and it shows up in your transactions instantly. Which means you are never guessing at cash flow in.
Then, the wamo app (which is actually an entire financial management platform) allows you to set up future and repeat payments out which are again updated instantly for you to see in your transaction records (as well as your being notified for every payment in and out) instantly. Which means you are never guessing at cash flow out. This remains true no matter how many team members are added to the account and are creating and taking payments using the business QR code, and no matter how big your business grows.
And wamo comes up trumps on integration 1 and 2: integrating QR capability and the platform into your current business is effortless and takes minutes to set-up and, 2. Integrating your familiar accounting tools (like Sage One and Xero) is frictionless too.
Laine Redpath
Instant payments are the key for small business growth
Instant. Now. Immediately. Without delay. This is what consumers expect now more than ever. It has become clearly unfeasible to successfully run any business today without being able to take payments instantly. Consumers want to be able to pay in whatever way is most convenient for them and businesses want the money in their account instantly. And since both of these things are possible – especially with the burgeoning availability of QR tech – it is only left for businesses to choose the right tool to integrate and get going.
Sinan Elver
Start now, scale now.
To start growing your business today – download wamo contactless and go. It’s available in all the usual places and onboarding is quick and painless.
