Online payment methods are regularly used around the world. The only difference between how you pay and how your customers pay around the world is the norms of their geographic location. Below are the most popular forms of online payment based upon the region of the world.
Top 10 online payment methods
Platform
Europe
North America
Asia
Australia & New Zealand
Credit/Debit Cards
MasterCard Visa American Express
MasterCard American Express Discover
UnionPay MasterCard Visa
Visa MasterCard American Express
eWallet
PayPal Amazon Pay Google Pay
PayPal Apple Pay Google Pay
WePay Chat AliPay Paytm
PayPal Apple Pay Samsung Pay
Crypto
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Instant Financing
Klarna
Klarna Afterpay
Konbini
zipPay Klarna
There seem to be so many ways we can pay for things and how our businesses can receive transactions. We’ve listed the top 10 online payment methods you should consider now and in the future based on ease of use and coverage around the world. We’ve come a long way in the last 100 years for how we pay for things. Generally, people were able to barter and trade common goods for one another, now we typically focus on paying with the money we have in our bank accounts.
A woman sits with her laptop and financial reports doing her monthly budget.
1. Paypal
PayPal is one of the safest and popular forms of online payment. Its popularity stems from its simplicity and speed. While it is quick and easy to use, they charge a fee depending on the currency being used and the size of the transaction.
2. Amazon Pay
It seems that Amazon has their hands into every scope of business and shopping. Amazon Pay utilizes its users’ accounts to store payment information to ensure a painless payment process. One reason why their platform is so popular is that many third-party websites accept Amazon payment methods. If you have done any shopping online, you probably are familiar with this system.
3. eBay
This company’s payment system allows shoppers to enter their information, process it, and never leave the site. You do not need to have any other accounts to buy or sell items on their marketplace.
4. Google Pay
Once you enter your payment information on your google account, you are able to quickly check out on third-party sites, send or request money from your friends directly, and use your phone to pay in stores. One of the most convenient things about google pay is that it is free to use for you and your customers.
5. Apple Pay
With the mobile telephone market dominated by the iPhone, using Apple Pay seems like a natural choice for many customers to make. Hooking up Apple Pay to your phone allows you to pay with Face ID and without any contact at all. Compared to the typical debit and credit card payments, it allows users to pay in a safer and more secure way.
The top ten online payment solutions include platforms with NFC.
6. Direct Debit Payments
This method of payment takes the money directly out of your account and into the hands of the business. This allows for faster payments and less time for money to be sitting in your accounts payable. Direct Debit Payments also allow you to set up recurring payments to different businesses without ever giving it a second thought. You can read our article about options beyond ACH.
7. Gift Cards
We are all familiar with this form of payment. This card allows you to shop online but is usually restricted to a specific company or retailer. This card cannot be reloaded and is worthless once the amount on the card has been exhausted.
8. Instant Financing for Large Purchases
With instant financing, you no longer have to worry about having enough money in your bank account. This allows purchases to be made in full upfront for the business but allows the customer to create a payment plan for months to come. One of the best parts about this online payment method is that your payment plan is interest-free. The only downside is that you will have to pay a fee upfront to allow you to reap the benefits of later payments.
9.Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are on the rise for young investors. With the most popular crypto being BitCoin. When this currency first started, there was a lot of speculation and doubt to whether or not it really had value. Unlike the American Dollar, BitCoin is not backed by any physical assets. Most currencies have a gold backing, but crypto is backed by people believing it has value. Cryptocurrency is very volatile and its worth can change at any given moment so be careful and do your research before you make a decision. To stay current in your business, consider the future of online crypto payments. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk is accepting BitCoin as a payment method for Tesla products.
The Scope of Online Payments
While there are many options in the fintech world, we understand that the landscape is ever-changing. What is popular today may be replaced by a new option in six months. We will try our best to update this article as the options become available.
Think back to moving out of your parent’s house for the first time. You finally got your own apartment and have taken full responsibility for yourself. The idea of moving out is exciting and you cannot wait to start. You are determined to start a new life on your own and think you can do it all by yourself.
Staff Augmentation Services
Once you get to your newly purchased apartment, you start to shop for furniture and find the perfect couch. You purchase the couch and it finally gets delivered, only to find out that the delivery service only drops it off at the bottom of your apartment complex. Now you are forced to try to drag the couch up three flights of stairs and potentially damage it. This is the time to swallow your pride and call some of your friends to help you move it. This task would have been impossible without them, but that is exactly what friends do for each other. In the workplace, we are often faced with the same types of issues that require an extra hand or two. In order to handle special situations, you should consider augmenting your staff.
The help you need in time of growth
The word augment itself is defined by Webster’s dictionary as, “to make greater, more numerous, larger, or more intense.” The application of staff augmentation has a very wide scope and fits into many scenarios, but not every situation calls for it. Staff augmentation’s categories are typically broken into the time-frame in which they are working, then into the specific needs for each job. Sometimes the gap in your business only needs to be filled because an employee is on vacation or there is a short increase in demand, this would be an example of a business that needs short-term service. Special projects may require an additional set of hands or a skill that you do not have in-house. This would require medium term service because it is still most likely faster than hiring someone to work for you permanently. We can specify these employees further by breaking them into three new groups: commodity, skill-based, and highly-skilled.
As per a Statista report, the global outsourcing market in 2019 before the Coronavirus hit the world was $ 92.5 billion. And after the pandemic, the IT staff augmentation market size grew to $ 132.9 billion.
Commodity
These workers are typically needed because you have a shortage of reliable employees and/or you need more hands to complete the task. The commodity worker typically deals in manual labor, warehouse, or retail work.
Skill-based
These workers need to have more skills than the commodity workers, but usually need to have basic skills to be able to work in an office setting. For example, a basic understanding of excel to handle spreadsheets in a basic skill that can transfer over to most office jobs.
Highly-Skilled
These workers have the highest level of skill and usually have lots of training and would be regarded as professionals. The hiring of these workers is based upon the skills that they have, not their overall usefulness. For example, you may be automating certain aspects of your business that require IT experts.
Companies are using staff augmentation to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Below are the reasons why you should consider augmenting today:
Bridging to Hire
Staff augmentation is a very efficient way to ease the hiring process. While you are currently looking for a qualified candidate for your empty position, you could use staff augmentation to fill the role until you find a permanent new worker. This allows your company to operate at full efficiency without a permanent full-time employee.
Specialization
Sometimes you run into a temporary problem that does not mandate a new full-time position. For example, if you are rebranding your company you can augment an employee that specializes in logo design and development to do it for you instead of using a current employee that may not be as well-versed in that area.
Increased Capacity
There are often seasonal demands that require more labor during certain times of the year compared to others. Augmenting staff during this time is faster than hiring someone for them to only come in during those seasons.
Business Strategy
Building a team to complete a certain task that may be out of your company’s niche can allow you to gain the competitive advantage by increasing time to market or being more agile.
Understanding the Scope of your Request
Staff Augmentation is optimized when utilized in the right scenarios. Identifying your situation will allow you to make the correct staff augmentation choices.
If your projected project time is under 500 hours (generally considered to be a smaller project), you should consider using a small outsourcing firm. Smaller firms typically have a smaller plethora of workers available and generally come at a lower price. Although the work will be less expensive, the work will not be of less quality. These companies work hard to prove themselves and ensure their quality of workers.
Larger projects that are projected to take more time will require larger companies and often cost more. These companies have a larger portfolio of previous work and are concrete with their work and its quality.
Staff Augmentation in Today’s World
There are huge advantages to businesses exercising staff augmentation. For example, old or smaller mom-and-pop shops show great potential from utilizing this service. Hiring outside IT staff to automate a businesses activity can improve profits and reduce hassle. Small shops do not usually have the human capital to perform these acts from within, so using staff augmentation makes their lives much easier. Don’t be intimidated by a system or process you are unfamiliar with. Consider staff augmentation to bring your company to the next level.
In conclusion, just like when you call the right friends to help you get a task done at home or at play. Staff augmentation is the right choice when it comes to a business savvy decision. This specific service is essential to your business during times of growth while saving you both time and money. Let oAppsNet be your partner and first choice when it comes to building out a great team. Contact us and we can help you get started in the right direction.
Have you ever seen a picture of yourself from years ago and wonder, “Where did that shirt go?” You start in the closet and tirelessly check through every hanger and every shelf. You swear the shirt was in there, but it still seems to be lost. You are so determined to find the shirt you head to the basement and start checking old boxes of worn-out clothes. Box after box, you find dozens of shirts, but not THE shirt. Your search seemed to be a failure so you head upstairs in defeat. You wake up the next morning to get ready to go to work, go to the closet, and find the shirt you were looking for was in your closet all along. You can not believe you missed it even though it was right in front of you the entire time.
Person working on laptop computer next to mobile phone on clean desktop without any paper in sight.
These “needle in a haystack” situations are often frustrating and time-consuming. If you had labeled your boxes in the basement or had organized the clothes in your closet, you could have found the shirt right away. We find these situations in the workplace as well as at home. A client calls asking for a specific purchase order from years ago and now you have to rummage through the old files to find exactly what they were asking for. With an automated system, all it takes is a few keystrokes and a search bar. This is the paperless advantage.
A recent Deloitte study showed overall improvement on customer service centric business after going paperless.
Understanding the Paperless Advantage
In the 21st Century, is it crucial for businesses to be up-to-date with technology in order to stay competitive, yet many companies are not utilizing these revolutionary advances. A survey by Ephesoft, Inc. reports that 85 percent of businesses are not fully paperless. While it may take time to be completely paperless, only approximately 50 percent of businesses are even pursuing a paperless workplace. This situation leaves room for your business to take advantage of this new financial technology while your competitors stick to the old methods.
The Advantages:
Time
Just like looking for your lost article of clothing, searching for specific documents can take much longer than it should. Your new automated system can sort and store your documents and allows you to quickly find the files you need. For example, in an automated Accounts Payable system a single clerk can increase productivity by 500 percent. Now you have the speed to cycle through more invoices and the ability to find specific documents quickly. Any automated system that regulates your business, moves your time from stressful number crunching to developing strategy.
Money
An automated Accounts Payable system can decrease the average cost of processing an invoice to only $5. The value of a single employee increases due to their increased efficiency. These are some of the things that may have been overlooked or unknown when surveying your own company. A perfect manual structure for handling accounts payable does not compare to an automated system.
Accuracy
Accounts Payable is a section of your business that tends to drown in paper. Your employees are dealing with stacks of invoices and purchase orders that often lead to confusion and error. With an automated accounts payable system, human processing errors disappear. Once your invoices are in the system, they will be able to detect inconsistencies and errors. Your team will now be able to produce the most accurate financial reports and manufacture the most reliable forecasting so you know exactly how your business has been operating and how it will operate in the future.
Understanding the Meaning of “Automation”
While this world is getting more technologically advanced every day, some of the methods we use are still not as useful if not done properly. For example, sending an invoice through an email as a PDF is an advance of technology, but still requires an employee to manually input the raw data. The government is trying to push for “e-Invoices” for tax and regulation purposes.
Many countries are actually requiring this type of automation for the same reasons. For example, if it is difficult to find a document in your back office, the government will probably have a much harder time than someone who knows the ins and outs of your business. This update in technology is also shortening the time between receiving invoices, and processing. All parties involved are benefiting from this process and, from the look of it, will most likely be a requirement for businesses in the future.
Updating your system to be more efficient is the next step in your business, whether it is by choice or by law. This update in technology is the future and is helping your business stay organized as well as keeping your tax information in order. By not utilizing the paperless advantage, you are putting your business two steps behind your competition. Alleviating the paper burden on your company will let your business reach new heights in the future.
In the process of incorporating new technologies in small and medium-sized enterprises, the Cloud continues to be the most important. It’s also the one that helps the most in improving day-to-day operations of most businesses by facilitating the reduction of time in deployments and operating costs, at the same time that it allows increasing productivity and in many cases, income.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) app on smartphone screen connecting data with cloud computing, access to HR management, production control, accounting
To the Cloud and Beyond
There are three types of cloud services available and defining the right one for your business requires a close analysis of your companies needs, objectives, and long-term goals. The three types are:
Public
Private
Hybrid (public/hybrid)
As I mentioned before, choosing the right cloud configuration for your business requires that many department heads and or managers be involved in the decision-making process. As an example, the team that needs to make these decisions could consist of but is not limited to the following roles:
CIO (Chief Information Officer)
CTO (Chief Technology Officer)
Apps Manager
Business Manager
While these may be just a few roles, decision-makers, and influencers that may be involved in choosing the right cloud configuration for your business sometimes you may require input from an external source such as on-prem to cloud consultants. A consultant can be a great asset and help your team define the best route to take. The current changing landscape has pushed many SMEs into digital transformation and cloud computing is the fastest-growing sector.
“We’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months.” —Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella1
In this article, we have outlined for you 7 things that are business viable in the decision-making process for on-premises to cloud migration.
Cost reduction
The Cloud does not need its own hardware since everything is hosted on the provider’s servers. This means savings in the cost of physical equipment and the costs of maintaining your own data center: space, energy, physical security, air conditioning, and maintenance costs are not covered.
Nor is it necessary to pay for specialized equipment to maintain and support the platforms. The Cloud is a service and as such, it includes the previous points.
Flexibility
Companies can outsource routine operations such as data storage and backup, thus focusing on their own business operations. Collaboration in such an environment gives organizations the ability to communicate and share more easily, compared to traditional methods.
If you are working on a project in different locations, these platforms could be used to give internal collaborators, contractors and third parties access to the same files.
Scalability
The use of the Cloud is a great solution because it allows organizations to scale and reduce their computing resources efficiently and quickly according to their needs. If resource demands increase, capacities can easily be upgraded without having to invest in physical infrastructure.
This level of agility can give you a real advantage over competitors. Having high-performance resources available on demand without upfront investments is probably the biggest advantage of the Cloud. Business continuity
Protecting data and systems is an important part of business continuity planning. Whether a natural disaster, power failure, or other crisis occurs, having your data stored in the Cloud ensures that it is backed up and protected in a safe place. Being able to access information quickly allows you to maintain operations, as usual, minimizing any downtime and lost productivity.
Competitive advantage
Not all companies will migrate to the Cloud, at least not yet. However, organizations that adopt these platforms find many benefits that positively impact the business. It’s cost-effective, cost-saving, highly reliable, and provides the scalability, flexibility, agility, high performance, and security businesses need today.
Trust
Cloud providers build redundant architectures as a first principle. In the Cloud, your data is not only stored on a server but on several servers. Depending on the vendor, the data could even be stored on servers in multiple locations in the event of a catastrophic failure in a given server farm. This means that no single hardware failure will affect the business. Also, it means that you can expect excellent reliability in terms of access to your data or services. Most providers even guarantee 99.9% to 99.999% uptime.
Security
Is the Cloud safe? Yes. There are mechanisms to ensure this. An authentication method is especially secure if, in addition to a password, at least one other parameter is required to unlock it, this is also known as Two-Auth and it is the most secure way to authenticate between accounts. It is for this reason that it is recommended for use in areas with a high-security risk. Along with the combination of different keys, there is also the possibility of using one-time passwords or integrating an object into the authentication process, for example, a USB stick.
Ready for your company to transcend? Please leave us a comment below or contact us and let us be your ally when it comes to on-premise to cloud transitions. More info at info@oappsnet.com
Before the calculator was made, how long do you think it took to accurately complete a balance sheet? The calculator, a device everyone has on their phone, used to not exist and the creation of this device alleviated the stress of many jobs that required rigorous arithmetic. If companies refused to buy calculators during that time, they would be left in the dust by their competition.
Accounting Tasks Made Easy
Accounts payable automation is another example of how we are evolving in the workplace to take the rigorousness out of jobs that require cross referencing documents and reading long serial numbers. Without an automated accounts payable system, not having physical access to financial documents hinders an employee’s ability to do their work with a high level of precision. In this day and age, having multiple workers in the office seems like a distant memory andmany companies were negatively impacted.
One of the biggest changes we faced was having to work from home. A colleague was no longer down the hall for a clarifying question, paper trails became harder to follow, and business productivity diminished. This lack of communication between different departments led to inaccurate financial reporting. According to a survey done by Censuswide, companies that did not feel confident in their financial reporting attributed their lack in confidence to old bookkeeping practices.
Manually tracking invoices and payments can be overwhelming and could lead to human error, resulting in the company making financial decisions based upon an inaccurate portrayal of their business. The year of 2020 has made it clear that accounts payable automation is a very valuable tool that can help keep your company running smoothly. While all of us are working remote, accounts payable automation could be the answer to your problems. Here are some reasons why:
Increased Productivity
The average clerk can process up to 5 invoices an hour compared to 30 invoices an hour with accounts payable automation! Reducing the amount of time you spend processing invoices decreases the demand of hiring clerks as your company grows. Now you can spend your time and money on other parts of your company that you feel need improving. So don’t think of an automated accounts payable system as a costly service that only alleviates the burden from one side of your business. You will extra time and resources available to you that you didn’t know existed.
Reduced Costs
Manually processing invoices cost companies approximately $15 an invoice, but accounts payable automation brings that price down to nearly $5 an invoice. So now you are processing more invoices and purchase orders at a lower cost and a higher volume. Increasing the productivity and reducing costs through accounts payable automation will be optimizing your business’s workflow potential.
Greater Internal Control
Implementing an automated accounts payable system reduces your risk for fraud. By using this new financial technology, you are reducing the risk for someone to be manipulating your financial information. Automation also double checks your invoices with purchase orders to ensure there has been no duplicate payments or fraudulent behavior. Greater Accuracy
With an automated system you no longer need to worry about human processing errors. This reduction in faulty reporting will lead to greater financial accuracy and allow the leaders of your company to make the best decisions possible with the most accurate and up-to-date information available.
Increase in Cash Flow
The time you used to speed up your payment processing has now allowed you to receive your money faster. With this result in high speed payments, your company is now in a safer position than before. During times like the pandemic, having a healthy cash flow is especially important to keeping your business running smoothly.
Make the Transition Responsibly
When companies started using calculators instead of abacuses, productivity increased, the need for more number crunchers disappeared, and accuracy improved. You could be experiencing the same kind of technological advances as these former businesses owners by taking advantage of the leap in financial technology. In the world’s current workplace environment, having access to a system that alleviates your current burden about information sharing and financial reporting accuracy is priceless. Don’t let the pandemic slow your company down and make the switch to an automated accounts payable system. Contact us today and let us be part of the automation process you want to put in place. Email us info@oapssnet.com
