Over the past few years, millions of small business owners across the country have been able to weigh the benefits of finding new ways to accept credit card payments, outside the traditional transaction processing system. Instead of paying through the nose for expensive point of sale scanners and systems, they can now do so with just a little investment in a portable card reader from a small but growing number of different companies.
In the past, the famed Square credit card reader, which plugs into most mobile devices and works via a standard, easily downloaded app, wasn’t the only option, but it was certainly the most popular and best-known, according to a report from the Associated Press. However, that reality might now be changing, as more companies introduce their own card scanners, and create additional competition in this field. That, in turn, could be good news for companies that are looking to get into this kind of payment processing and away from the more expensive traditional kind.
How the market is taking shape
Square has been around since 2009 and has grown to near ubiquity in the mobile payment processing market. The company recently announced that it processed more than $100 million in sales in a single day, and that number is only like to continue growing, the report said. Along those same lines, it’s likely that other current industry participants like PayPal and Intuit will continue seeing upticks, and the online retail giants Amazon and Etsy are likewise now trying to get into the field.
The reason small business owners say having this kind of payment flexibility is important is rather simple, the report said: The way people deal with their purchases is changing. In the past decade or more, card payments have become a far more preferred and simple method of completing a transaction, and others that were around for much longer have fallen by the wayside.
“People just don’t carry cash anymore,” Ruthie Youngman, the owner of jewelry company LoveYourBling, told the news agency.
Companies that want to best position themselves for financial success might want to consider the ways in which they can start to cut costs, including those for small business insurance policies. For instance, if they can reduce expenses on things like general liability insurance, they may be able to save thousands of dollars annually to improve their bottom lines.
