Accepting Credit Cards Payments Online - Mapping The Business Processes You Need!
guys we are talking about your money in processes accepting credit cards and the things that you need to consider [Music] hey there my loves welcome back to cptv i'm cp and this is the place for aspiring and growing entrepreneurs who want to turn their passions into businesses and their businesses into freedom does that sound like you well then you're going to want to come on in make yourself at home take a look around and definitely subscribe my love because every single tuesday i am giving you the strategies and the step-by-step business processes and systems to implement immediately into your business and get to that level of entrepreneurial freedom that you are working so hard for and that you absolutely deserve so go ahead and hit that subscribe button and click that bell so that you don't miss any of it and of course if you like this then show me don't hold it in smash that like button and say in the comments show me the money cp [Music] it's a classic y'all a classic love that movie okay so welcome back to the process lab y'all we've been talking about business processes so far all year long and we're going to continue to talk about them until we get all of your business processes and systems set up so that you can really feel success and scale and grow and just get that much closer to that dream life that you are manifesting and don't forget our free process lab workbook if you want to really call it that it's my guide to creating business processes that scale and it includes a free sop template but it's kind of like our workbook that we've been using as we go through this process lab series so make sure that you grab that it is in the link the link is in the description below and it's also pinned in the comments it's absolutely free you just grab it because we will be using that and talking about that a lot throughout this process lab series and all the rest of the episodes and it is going to teach you step by step my process for creating business processes and sops in my businesses because you need to know that before you can really dive deep and today is a deeper dive so let's talk about the money yes your money in process and now i've already discussed this as being one of the core five processes that you have to create and that you have to think through when you're setting up business systems and i'll go ahead and link to that video right here in the cards so that you can watch it but today we are going to go deeper all right we're going to wrap our arms around key money in business processes accepting credit cards yes it is 2021 and yes you do need to accept some credit cards in order to make some money in 2021 i'm just saying okay so let's talk about the pros and the cons and the primary three ways that you can actually get yourself set up to start accepting credit card payments and get that money in process going so that it can become a primary money in process for your business so let's get to work okay so let's face it there are a million and one ways that you can exchange money with someone for a product or service nowadays ain't there i mean you can cash at them you can venmo them you can zelly them hell you can send a ferry you can have a pigeon drop it off you can have a drone deliver it i mean there are just a million ways but if you're running a business you need to have a professional way to bring money into that business right not cash app yeah y'all remember in last week's episode when i was telling y'all my story about how i wanted to work with somebody as a freelancer in my business i was going to hire him and ultimately i ended up not becoming a client of his because he had a crappy money in business process he did not accept credit cards he was trying to get me to cash app him some money from my business okay so i'll go ahead and link to that as well so that you can check out the entire story but anyway that was my point exactly so when talking about a critical money in process i am 100 telling you you have to begin to establish a process for accepting credit cards you have to get yourself set up to be able to do that and it can seem scary but the fact of the matter is there are so many pros to accepting credit cards and yes it does require some setup and some thought and some process but it is easy peasy and it's going to single-handedly change the game for you in your business so pro number one you have a much greater chance of capturing customers if you accept plastic i just read an article that said less than 20 percent of people use cash for transactions anymore that means that over 80 percent use credit cards so if you don't accept credit cards you are limiting yourself to make money right and nowadays with lower social interaction and kind of being in the middle of a damn pandemic and all if you haven't determined that setting up your process for accepting credit cards is critical then i don't even know what i can say to you okay because you just might be tripping or something anyway the second pro in accepting credit cards for you as an entrepreneur is that it naturally brings in higher revenues there are actually studies out there that have shown that people are likely to spend more if they can use credit instead of cash that is my story y'all okay you're just gonna have more people with debit and credit cards that they can use that are going to actually have cash on them not to mention the staggering numbers about the amount of people that actually use their phones to make purchases nowadays well unless you know something that i don't know about these phones i don't think nobody is putting cash into their phone these days right let alone if you are trying to target generation z look i have four z children and they don't even like to touch cash okay they want a card they don't even know how to count coins they don't know what a dime is a penny nothing and that brings me to the number three pro of accepting credit cards convenience it is just more convenient and things have to be more convenient right now right more so than ever before we can't even see each other y'all or come within six feet of each other okay and it's true for both you and your customer your customer is really going to embrace the convenience of being able to use a credit or debit card to make a purchase from you they're going to actually love it and for you as the business owner trust me credit card usage is going to allow you to do recurrent payments easier it's going to eliminate all kinds of unnecessary work it's going to make your entire money in process automated and it's going to also make accounting and inventory management so much easier for you to follow which is convenient because you can't be that much more free if you don't have convenience and trust me in my very first business credit card processing wasn't even truly possible okay i'm talking about the early 2000s and i have used some old school ways of getting my money in processes executed y'all now when i say old school i really mean inconvenient right i mean i had to employ entire teams of people to chase people down sometimes costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars but that's a whole other story okay but i can tell you since adding credit card processing into my businesses as a primary money in process it has truly changed the game for me and i know we talked about this before but i am building a business that will allow me to live an amazing lifestyle preferably from the beach with all kinds of travel included okay doing what i want to do when i want to do it so convenience and automation is extremely important to me and for you if that's your quest and credit cards can help you with that most definitely now don't get me wrong there are definitely some cons when it comes to accepting credit cards and the biggest of them all is the fact that there is an expense you have to pay now merchant service fees and processing fees depending upon which route you choose to go which i'm going to get into here shortly so it's instantly causing you to incur an expense per sale but i like to think of it as a convenience charge right it does exist but it's a charge and honestly in my entire career and entrepreneurial journey i've never not had some type of expense already tied to a money in process whether it was to have to pay a staff person in order to invoice people it was an expense or have to pay collections agencies to go after people for my money that was an expense or having to actually get in my car and go pick up checks and then pray that the checks don't bounce y'all okay that was an expense those all have been expenses so the processing fees that come along with accepting credit cards to me are nominal and worth it trust me because in order to make money you're going to have to spend a little money and the small fees that come along with credit card processing don't even equal it so it just kind of is what it is but it is a con you know the next biggest con that i would say with accepting credit cards is chargebacks and out-of-date card information so let me explain a little bit more okay so a chargeback happens when you have a customer that uses a credit card and then they go through their credit card company to dispute that charge and have it removed you could actually just have someone get their money back without any warning without any refund process anything but honestly you can mitigate the risk of that happening by simply making sure that you've got a really good money in process in place and a great product or service that you are delivering as well as being able to clearly define your money out refund and cancellation processes but that's next week okay and most of the time a customer isn't going to skip over you to dispute a charge if they trust you or they believe you so those really should be rare experiences but on the other hand it can be extremely frustrating when you've got someone making payments to you on a recurring basis because you've got an ongoing service that you're providing right or you've got a digital product that's broken up into monthly payments or you have a more expensive higher priced product that's broken up into smaller payments to make it more affordable because if it's going to automatically charge that credit card and that credit card information is no longer valid then you are not going to get paid and you've got to go back through the process of getting new credit cards from the customer but it is what it is okay the good news is you can incorporate some automatic steps into your process to take care of gathering that information if that does happen inside of your business i for instance employ something like a simple email sequence that's triggered when my system cannot automatically charge someone's credit card then that email sequence will automatically go out to that customer and request updated information in order for them to continue to have access to my service or anything like that or you can also have a conversation with a customer on your next coaching call or during your next consulting call or whatever just know that you definitely need to work through what that will look like as a part of accepting that plastic and incorporating this into your money and processes so let's take a look at this from the 10 000 foot view okay i want to summarize it all and break this down the pros that you have to think about all right number one accepting credit cards allows you to capture more customers number two accepting credit cards allows you to bring in more money and just increase your revenue overall number three accepting credit cards is convenient for both you and your customer so it just makes things easier to live a life that you love from the beach now the cons you have to think about number one it's going to cost you money to accept credit cards right you're going to have various fees that you may be subject to from processing fees to merchant fees to statement fees whatever they are but you're going to have an expense as it relates to the convenience of accepting credit cards okay number two you may also experience chargebacks when the customer kind of skips you and disputes the credit card charges directly with their credit card company you're gonna get a chargeback and you can be blindsided by those or not really even expect them but like i said you can also mitigate them if you set things up well and professionally in your business because folks will trust you and number three the mouse chase of getting updated credit card information on recurring charges if a payment card expires or changes and it does happen we all have had that happen right fraud whatever so it does require you to make sure that you're prepared with the steps that you will take in order to get new card information if that happens to you all right now i want to talk about the three primary ways to get set up to accept credit card payments and make this a money in process number one and i have to really put this disclaimer out there okay i have never pursued option number one well i can't say never because i think in the very beginning of my career i may have but i remember it being a huge pain in the butt so i never pursued it again all right and that is actually opening up a merchant account with a bank now this option tends to be a little less costly than option number two that i'm getting ready to tell you about but it is a lot more cumbersome of a process and sometimes it requires contracts and just paperwork and financial documents and just different stuff like that but it is a way that you can investigate if you want to look into merchant services option number two and the way that i've been accepting credit cards for the last 10 plus years is using a payment service provider it is a lot less time consuming to set up and it is so much easier doesn't require all that stuff and when i say using a payment service provider i'm talking about setting up a merchant account with a square or a stripe or a paypal type of service and this is the option that you will incur those per transaction and flat fees that i've already talked about but it really is convenient and some of them provide awesome services that allow you to do other things and keep track from an accounting perspective of your inventory and your sales by product really really really well so now i'm a stripe girl and i'm also a paypal girl and i always recommend using those and doing paypal as well if you can because a lot of people make transactions directly from their phones and the convenience and security that comes with having a paypal account allows for you to get phone based purchases so much easier i can tell you right now that i have not purchased things before because somebody didn't have paypal as an option and i was scrolling through my phone going to make a purchase and without paypal that means i would have to physically get up and go get my purse and get my credit card out and start typing in all these numbers or taking pictures and i just wasn't feeling that so the fact that i was not able to use paypal when i was shopping for my phone has definitely deterred me from making purchases with some vendors and it will definitely affect you so i definitely recommend even if you do use stripe or square or something like that that you also make sure that you have a paypal option as well and the third way you can get set up for accepting credit cards is really through using an e-commerce platform or your e-commerce platform especially if you're a product-based business or a digital product based business a lot of the etsy's or the ebays and the shopify's have built-in payment processors just like you know if you're an amazon vendor for instance and you can use those platforms as your storefront your website and as the payment processor but a lot of them also integrate with other payment processors like stripe as well so you can still use stripe with them too but you can ultimately set up a merchant account directly with your platform that you are selling your product through so it is an option right so yeah there are pros and cons to all of the ways that you can set up your credit cards some are more time consuming but cost less like merchant accounts with a bank and some cost a little bit more but are a lot more convenient like payment service providers and your e-commerce sites okay so you just really do have to kind of think through your process and what you really want it to look like in order to determine the best choice for you and your business and your goals but here are some questions that i want you to make sure you think through when you're deciding first what is your estimated volume of the transactions that you're expecting second what types of features do you need to track like inventory and refunds and returns and third what are the estimated fees that you're going to be looking at based on your volume that you're estimating if you do incur a per transaction fee that's why i say you need a process boo because once you begin to document the steps that you want your customers to go through or that you need to go through internally then you will be able to figure out exactly what assets you need in order to be able to get those things done then you're going to choose a money in process that has those assets and if you're looking at the screen right now thinking what are you talking about cp what you're drawing did you just love him i wonder what happened to him anyway i did an entire video on the step-by-steps of creating business processes already so i'm going to go ahead and link to that right now because it is critical that you check that out so that you know exactly what i'm talking about when i say assets all right guys we are talking about your money in processes accepting credit cards and the things that you need to consider i get the question all the time from people about how to set up their finances how they should be accepting money how do you do this how do you do that how can they bring more money into their businesses that is what we are talking about today your money in processes it is all a system boo it's all a process in every single aspect of your business journey if you create a process surrounding it you will scale very very rapidly trust me because that's ultimately the goal right you gotta scale before you can truly get to that freedom right so the process lab series continues if you've missed any of the other videos in the series i'll go ahead and put a link in the description below to the entire playlist because you need to get caught up boo and you need to join me next week when we continue with money and processes focused on invoicing i told you this is just the beginning because i promise you we will knock your process documentation and creation out in 2021 for your business so you can delegate so if you are hella pumped about that smash the like button and don't forget to subscribe in that bubble right there next to me so that you can catch us next week and every single week after that and don't forget to share this video with someone else and invite them into the lab okay you're gonna be getting some fun we're getting down and dirty and make sure you grab that free guide to creating business processes that scale with the sop template so that you can get started working through your processes and until next time my love i want you to stay safe see you back here next tuesday have a wonderful wonderful week bye-bye
2021-02-05 21:45
