The way customers are spending their money at hospitality venues is constantly changing. Modern advancements in technology have seen a rise in the use of contactless and other digital methods. Most notably NFC cards and paying by mobile. If hospitality EPoS systems don’t keep up with customer preferences, they may start falling behind.
Cash or contactless
It is important to note, that there is still a portion of people who use cash as their primary way of purchasing goods and services, so by no means should the use of cash be discouraged within a hospitality business. This applies mainly to people of older generations and those who aren’t as tech savvy. There has been a boom over recent years that has led to hospitality customers using more contactless methods of payment.
Benefits to implementing multiple payment methods
Providing multiple payment options is essential during the age of convenience. Accepting contactless, cash and card is now the industry standard for hospitality and retail. Despite only being formally available to the public in 2005 and released as standard in the following years, contactless payments have quickly grown in popularity, now accounting for up to 33% of all transactions. However, hospitality businesses on the high street is where we've see the largest change, the use of contactless payments has increased by 226%! This is due to some key factors, the rise of the contactless payment cap, the convenience, integration with phones and smart watches as well as being natively added to all major bank debit and credit cards.
Allowing more cashless options will also save money for hospitality companies. A large but often overlooked benefit of digital payment methods is the time saved during service and at the end of the day. Venues no longer need to count up and check as much physical money when cashing up, as everything is recorded in the back end automatically, streamlining your operation and reducing labour costs.
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Further benefits of integrated digital payments which should also be considered is how they are synced in real-time automatically and eliminate the need to be manually processed. Not only does this reduce human errors, it also reduces queueing at payment points, improving the average customers experience at your venue.
In order to use an online wallet or a payment app, a customer's information is required. By allowing this system to be present you can acquire more valuable data for your CRM. Combining this with an online ordering system creates a new way to offer services. Customers build profiles when ordering, providing the companies the opportunity to efficiently target and better understand. This benefits both parties, customers get an easy and convenient payment method that suits them, and hospitality businesses get to know their clientele better.
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Cash, being physical, can often be lost or go missing. Having all transactions automatically logged reduces the chances of anything going wrong. All information is tracked in SPARK Cloud HQ, making it easier to see exactly where your money is coming from.
Cashless does have a certain advantage over contactless. Cash doesn’t rely on an internet connection. If the power went out at a venue, a contactless system wouldn’t be able to operate and hospitality businesses would have to find alternate methods of taking payments from customers. SPARK handheld devices have the option to work on a 4G sim card, as long as the battery is charged, payments can continue as normal.
As we are currently in a situation where constantly washing our hands is the norm, people will be more sceptical about physical money. Eliminate the worries of future customers and prospects. By making sure EPoS systems are up to date, everyone will be safer when visiting hospitality venues.
SPARK'S payment solutions
SPARK believes in planning and moving towards a more certain future. SPARK Pay is added on our handheld devices to make the payment process simple for both employees and consumers. By processing payments on these, customers can pay how they want and staff members have all capabilities in their hands with no need to make extra trips. Additionally our handhelds come with inbuilt printers so the receipt can be given at the table.
Transactions made digitally are automatically synced with the SPARK Cloud HQ, as the EPoS connects with all our other products in our ecosystem. This information is provided as an easy to read report at the end of the day on the back office, and can be viewed anywhere with an internet connection.
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