Last Updated on March 13, 2024 by Saira Farman
SMS payments offer a convenient, paperless way for customers to pay you for your goods and services. Learn how text-to-pay is changing the game for your business.
Adding an SMS payment option to your payment options can boost customer loyalty, increase repeat customers, and build brand trust. This article will explore how SMS payments work, why they’re essential for your business, and how to get started.
Increased Adoption Rates
Mobile payment options are becoming increasingly popular in a world where consumers are constantly looking for ways to speed up processes and get what they want. SMS payments, or Text2Pay, allow customers to pay for products and services with a simple text message on their smartphone.
One of the most common uses for text-to-pay is for donations and fundraising events. The process is simple: a customer sends a text to a designated short code, and the payment is added to their monthly phone bill or charged to a credit or debit card on file.
Businesses that offer omnichannel payment options have high electronic payment adoption rates, leading to higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores and increased revenue. This e-adoption saves organizations time and money, with reduced mailing costs and fewer paper bills.
Text-to-pay also allows businesses to reach their customers where they spend most of their time — on their mobile phones. This increases the likelihood that customers will respond to your payment reminders. This increases your organization’s chances of getting paid, reducing late payments, and improving customer retention.
More Consistent Payments
Customers who opt to receive payment reminders by SMS are more likely to pay their bills on time, which in turn helps your business avoid costly late payments and delinquencies.
In addition to providing a simple payment method, pay by text also ensures that customer payment information is processed securely, which protects you and your customers from security breaches. Moreover, customers won’t be redirected to an external site, which further decreases the likelihood of compromised payment information.
For businesses, this means you can track the entire payments pipeline, including payment requests, recurring payments, and overdue invoices, all in one place. It also means you can easily send follow-up messages for due or unpaid requests and use the same messaging to prompt customers for feedback on their experience – without remembering to do it manually.
To truly leverage the benefits of SMS, you should build this into your customer journey from start to finish. For example, you can ask for a review after a transaction or include it in a payment message, helping you collect more checks.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
SMS (Short Message Service) payment is a simple and secure method of receiving payments from customers. Consumers can send a text to receive a PCI-compliant safe link, which allows them to pay via credit cards, debit cards, or Apple Pay.
Businesses can also use text messages to improve their overall customer satisfaction and retention by allowing them to communicate with customers before, during, and after a transaction. For example, a business can ask for feedback after purchase to improve its products and services to meet its customers’ needs.
In addition, businesses can send automated alerts and notifications to customers about their bills or other important information. This provides customers with an instant and seamless experience, which keeps them informed about their accounts and enables them to make informed decisions about their finances.
When implementing payment by text, businesses need to build it into their entire customer journey and focus on optimizing it from start to finish. This is so that customers can receive a customized and personalized experience, which leads to higher customer satisfaction and a more loyal customer base.
Increased Convenience
As customers become more accustomed to using mobile devices for shopping, businesses increasingly need to offer text-to-pay solutions. These services let people securely make purchases and pay recurring bills from their smartphones without having to input any credit card information or shipping details.
Consumers are also more likely to use a cashless payment method when purchasing because they want to avoid carrying cash or physical credit cards around. Moreover, the ease of mobile payments positively affects customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Accepting payments via text can help small businesses boost customer satisfaction and collect more timely payments. It also helps improve accounts receivable (AR) collections.
Increased Customer Loyalty
Text messaging is growing in popularity for both consumers and businesses. It’s an effective way to stay in touch with customers and drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. From appointment reminders and marketing promotions to bill-ready alerts, integrating a text-based solution with your business is a smart move.
With a PCI-compliant SMS payment gateway, businesses can send a one-word message to customers with their bill information and instantly accept payments from their credit card, debit card, or bank account, eliminating the need for login details like usernames and passwords. Additionally, a text-based payment method is secure as it reduces the risk of phishing attacks using email to access customer accounts.
In addition to lowering delinquency rates, a text-based solution helps businesses build loyalty by leveraging mobile wallets and value-added services. For example, Starbucks offers a mobile wallet solution that allows customers to register for their loyalty program without pulling out a physical card. This makes staying engaged and rewarding loyal customers easy, increasing the average spend and building brand loyalty.
