Despite the financial crisis, consumers continue to gravitate towards credit card payments while moving away from cash and checks. Credit card payments not only offer consumers a safe and convenient payment option but it also enables customers to buy products and services without having readily available cash in their wallets to cover the expense. By opening up your small business to credit card payment processing, you are likely to capture this growing consumer trend, resulting in increased revenues and profit streams.

Before making a decision, you must assess your business needs and the potential increase in revenues and profits that credit card processing will bring to your business:

1. What are your current revenues?

Start by calculating the revenues earned from sales over the last quarter or year. This information can be easily obtained from your previous financial records.

2. Get Free Quotes from Credit Card Processing Companies

Request quotes from the top credit card processing companies – setup fees, transaction fees, monthly minimum fees, discount rates, chargeback fees and credit card terminals included in the overall merchant processing offers.

The fees vary based on the type of credit card processing solution required:

      a. brick-and-mortar store/multiple store locations

      b. e-commerce solutions

      c. via mail

      d. via phone

3. Estimate the Potential Increase in Revenues

How many customers did not buy a product because your business does not accept credit cards? Multiply this number, estimated over the last quarter or year, with the average cost of products and the minimum transaction fee to get an indication of the revenue you will gain with credit card payments.

4. Estimate the Impact on Your Profit Streams

Assume your business does not acquire any new customers for an entire month. How will it impact your business if all your existing customers used only credit cards as a payment option?

5. Calculate the Loss from other Payment Options

Businesses that offer customers the payment option of using checks often incur some loss due to fraudulent checks, bounced checks and or late collections etc. Compare the loss and the effort with the value and convenience of credit card payments.

6. Increase Prices to Offset the Convenience of Credit Card Payment Processing

To ensure you maintain your existing profit streams in case of worst case scenarios, bump up the prices of products and services to include the convenience of credit card payments. If you sell items that are expensive, you will most definitely increase the likelihood of additional sales with credit card payments.

Prepare your business for credit card payment processing

Your business is losing valuable dollars by not accepting credit card payments, get started today by comparing credit card processing quotes from merchant processing companies. Once you decide to accept credit card payments, advertise it in your direct mails, newsletters, emails, and banners so customers are aware that they can make a purchase without having readily available cash in their wallets resulting in increased revenues and profit streams for your business.

Tags: Credit Card Processing

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