accept online payments

If you haven’t read my post on You are loosing money FAST by not letting customer pay Online and how to fix that, please read it first.

It explains why you need to start receiving payments online now.

The video below shows you step by step, how to create a payment link with VoguePay. This very useful if you don’t have a website or you want people to click on you social media posts to pay you.

The first step is to visit https://voguepay.com

Please see our Recommendation on How to Setup an Online Payment System that Collects Money for you, verifies the Payment automatically and provides instant settlement and alerts to you.

Paying online has its risks but a lot of businesses are seeing increased sales with an online payment system.

Before I break it down for you let me tell you that it doesn’t work for a new business. You have to build your brand identity first which leads to trust before people are confident enough to pay you online.

Back to the matter.

What you could be loosing
Imagine you advertise your product to 5000 people using facebook adverts. If about 150 people visit your website, about 20 people may want to buy your product immediately. Assuming your product is priced at N3,500, you have a potential income of N75,000.00.

Sounds great right, not quite

Something terrible happens, you don’t accept online payments!

So, some people will go ahead and place their order hoping to pay you on delivery, some will try to contact you to get your bank account details, some others will just go away.

I had an experience recently, I was supposed to pay my son’s school fees. The school sent me instruction on how to pay by whatsapp and on reading through, I was supposed to get a bank draft or make a deposit in my son’s name into the school’s bank account and then come to the school with a copy of the bank teller/transfer receipt.

It gets worse.

Since I planned to pay for the school bus, I had to add the fee for “one way” school bus to the school fees. This had to be explained to the school later.

For such a big school, this was too much stress for me.

Read on to understand what is really going on and what you can do about it

For an established business, your customers know you. They have purchased your products.

They now know your brand.

It becomes easy for them to pay you in any way you want especially online.

Why a Customer may not Pay Online
Let’s start with the psychology of making a sale

A customer visits your website/Instagram and sees a product he likes There are a number of reasons why he may not pay at once

Some are:

He doesn’t like to buy things online
He doesn’t have money on the bank account where he can pay online or transfer from so he might want to make a transfer 1st
He doesn’t even have the money at all
He wants to see and touch the product before he pays for it
He might be using his phone to view the product and it’s convenient for him to pay on the phone
Etc.
Let’s look at them one by one

1) He doesn’t like to buy things online - this is a major character of older people. The younger people like things easy so they are more likely to buy online. The only thing you can do here is to Target your adverts to younger people who are most likely to pay online and if that is not possible for your type of product, provide other payment options and way to follow up to close the sale.

2) He doesn’t have money on the bank account where he can pay online or transfer from so he might want to make a transfer 1st - People have money in different accounts for different reasons. I personally have 6 accounts which I use for different things. In your setup, people need to be able to pay you from any account with the greatest ease.

The danger here is that, in trying to move money from one account to another, there may be network failure, the payment may leave one account and fail to get to the other account, he might get a phone call and forgets about the whole thing and so on.

What if the person can just dial a code from his phone to pay you from the bank where his money is without the need to move money around? That would be awesome.

3) He doesn’t even have the money at all - since he indicated interest, you may want to get him to join your mailing list so you can keep the conversation. That way, when he has money, he will usually come back to you and hopefully make a purchase. See my top recommendation on how to Setup a Mailing List System that Automatically Reminds Customers and Prospects to Come and Buy from You

4) He wants to see and touch the product before he pays for it - this is the best for new businesses. You don’t want to put the customer under pressure to pay and come off looking suspicious. You offer a sort of pay on delivery payment option.

When I started buying from Nigerian online shops, I would always use the pay on delivery option but after a few successful purchases, I started paying online when I order

It’s part of the buying psychology, once a customer has come to trust you, he will pay online.

5) He might be using his phone to view the product and it’s not convenient for him to pay on the phone - for such customers, not paying may not be because they don’t have the money. It just not convenient.

Imagine going through your Instagram at 1am while sitting through a boring party and you come across an advert or a product you like, I bet you will find a way to note the name of the page and come back later- which doesn’t happen 50% of the time. You forget to come back.

You have to find a way to offer something that enables you to remind the customer later. This can be achieved by offering a free download when the customer submits an email address. You can read more about this here

So how do we setup online payment?
There are a number online payment providers in Nigeria but in choosing one, you have to look out for the ones that give you the greatest number of ways which customer can pay you.

The available ones are:

• Paystack I currently use this service. Free to get a personal account but you are limited to the amount of money you can receive. If you get a Business account all limits are lifted. With this, you can accept payments by ATM card, USSD and direct bank debit.

• Rave by Flutterware I also currently use this service. Its free to get a personal account but you are limited to the amount of money you can receive. If you get a Business account all limits are lifted. With this, you can accept payments by ATM card on your website from within and outside Nigeria

• Cashenvoy Free to get a personal account but you are limited to the amount of money you can receive. If you get a Business account all limits are lifted. With this, you can accept payments by ATM card on your website.

• Voguepay I currently use this. Its Free to register and get a personal account but you are limited to the amount of money you can receive. If you get a Business account all limits are lifted for N2500. With this, you can accept payments by ATM card on your website

• Interswitch This is the market leader but they are quite expensive. The cheapest plan is not less than N15,000 and its limited to only online payments. With the full plan , you can accept payments by ATM card, ATM machine, USSD and direct bank debit.

• PayU Its Free to register and get a personal account but you are limited to the amount of money you can receive. If you get a higher account. With this, you can accept payments by ATM card on your website.

• Remita I have used this before. They let you start the transaction online, generate a code which you can take to the bank to pay. Its free to get a personal account but you are limited to the amount of money you can receive. If you get a Business account all limits are lifted. With this, you can accept payments by ATM card, ATM machine, USSD and direct bank debit.

Apart from Interswitch, all the payment providers allow you to create a link where people can click to pay you online. Some even let you setup subscription type of payments. You can then post that link below you social media products or send it my email to your prospects to pay. Click here to watch a free video where I create a payment link using VoguePay

However, if you have a lot of customers and who pay you regularly, e.g. a school, having a link for payment will become very clumsy. You can have your customers visit your website, choose the services/products the want to pay for and then pay. This way, you will have an organized way for accessing payments and also making easy for them to pay you.

Please see our Recommendation on How to Setup an Online Payment System that Collects Money for you, verifies the Payment automatically and provides instant settlement and alerts to you.

Please see our Recommendation on How to Setup an Online Payment System that Collects Money for you, verifies the Payment automatically and provides instant settlement and alerts to you.

If you enjoyed this article or have questions please share below and make your comments