For years, businesses have had to wait days for money made from a transaction to hit their bank accounts. This made some sense when cheque payments were more commonplace, but nowadays the widespread use of online banking, debit and credit cards makes the delay between transaction and remittance almost nonsensical.
As commercial outfits become more sophisticated, businesses are increasingly looking for new solutions to help them operate more efficiently. When it comes to payments, the answer might just be faster processing – a system that dramatically increases the speed with which funds reach a merchant’s bank account following a transaction. In this article, we look at what faster processing is, along with how it could benefit businesses of all shapes and sizes.
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What is faster payments processing?
Faster Processing is a card processing system that significantly reduces the funding delay that businesses experience when taking payment from their customers. Rather than waiting several days for funds to hit a business account, businesses using faster processing can expect money to reach them within just a few hours of the transaction being completed.
Unlike some commercial tech solutions, faster processing does not compromise any other business-critical operations like transaction reporting or fraud prevention, providing a seamless and lightning-quick payment solution.
Consistent cash flow
One of the major benefits of faster processing is the way in which it improves cash flow. With faster processing, business owners can rest assured that the money they’ve earned will be in their account without any substantial delay – meaning that they can meet their business obligations and continue working on the growth of their venture without having to worry about when they’ll have enough in their account to pay the bills.
With quick and reliable remittance of payments into merchant accounts, businesses could benefit from enhanced cash flow visibility and simplified accounting procedures on account of having a more constant flow of money.
Designed to be flexible
One of the key benefits enjoyed by businesses using faster processing is the flexibility that is built into the system. With multiple options for businesses to choose from, the way that you receive payments will no longer be potluck and this increased certainty will give you the confidence to keep trading come what may.
Depending on the size of your business, faster processing comes in three major variants, namely:
- Intra-day funding, which sees each card transaction processed and funded on an individual basis. For small businesses with limited footfall, this option could see significant positive ground made on cash flow where the operation might otherwise be left without any deposits for days on end.
- End-of-day batch funding, where all card transactions from a trading day are aggregated into a single batch which is funded as a single payment at the end of the day. This can make accounting simple and provide particularly useful insights into trading metrics on various days.
- Hourly batch funding, where card transactions are aggregated and funded on an hourly basis. With immediate cashflow, businesses using this form of faster processing benefit from enhanced liquidity and the resultant ability to operate in an agile and flexible manner.
With a range of payment options available, faster processing could help businesses to get a handle on their finances by providing cash flow certainty. This could not only be good for your business’ bank balance, but also see you become a better debtor and improve your creditor relations as you are able to meet your financial obligations with greater ease and fluidity.
No compromise on security with faster payments
In business, it’s often the case that positive steps are traded off against compromises, but that’s not the case with faster processing. Even when payments are not being transferred into accounts on national holidays, you can still expect to receive statements and text messages confirming that your transactions have been processed – allowing you to track your cash flow when the banks aren’t working.
With faster processing, businesses can also count on enhanced fraud prevention. For each and every attempted or declined transaction, the faster processing system conducts analysis that seeks to safeguard your business against potentially fraudulent transactions and limits your exposure to unnecessary loss. Faster payments are only offered by organisations with heavily vetted security procedures, and so users can be certain that their details are safe.
Same day funding, no snags
With such obvious benefits, it begs the question of why more UK businesses are not taking advantage of faster processing to improve their cash flow and better secure their commercial interests.
Fortunately, it’s easy to get started with same day card processing and you can kickstart your journey towards quicker payments by reviewing your payment solutions. At present, faster processing is exclusively offered by UTP Group, a merchant services provider that works with the industry’s leading organisations to bring a range of first-class card machines and payment solutions to businesses across the country. And if you have an in-store payment solution, make sure you have enough card machine paper for your customers.
If you want to take payment in hours instead of days, or simply want to revamp the way in which your payment solutions interface with your commercial operations, faster processing could be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
