How Going Cashless Enhances Customer Experience

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Everyday, a new venue goes cashless, be it a major league sports stadium, an amusement park or even a hotel. This trend suggests that the future of payments is cashless which means physical currency will slowly be phased out of circulation.

visa contactless payment
Source: Visa

The advantages to businesses are quite obvious, they get secure and instant payments into their accounts without having to spend additional money handling cash and worrying about theft of physical bank notes.

Enhance Consumer Experience by Going Cashless

However, the benefits for consumers and users far outweigh the benefits for businesses. Cashless and contactless payments as opposed to cash transactions significantly improve a customer’s journey, enhancing their purchase experience overall be it a high dollar transaction or a trip down to the bakery for some bread.

Convenience

First and foremost, cashless is convenient; its a lot easier to reach for a card or pull up your cell phone to pay rather than fumbling around with a wallet or purse looking for the right denominations of currency to pay. Same goes for the cashier, its a lot easier to receive an exact payment via card rather than receiving cash and having to calculate the change and pulling it out the register.

Soon, all you will need to carry is your phone; no wallet, no cards, no cash, no key fobs.

Speed of Checkout

With convenience also comes efficiency; when there’s no cash involved, customer service times are cut down significantly. Cash processing takes up to 7 seconds while card processing can take between 1 to 2 seconds. This is mostly credited to the fact that there’s less fumbling around with wallets and cash notes by both parties.

slow checkout queue
Source: Alamy

When customer service times are reduced, businesses are able to service more customers in the same amount of time, in turn, reducing wait times and enhancing customer experience.

Hygiene

In this day and age with an ongoing health crisis, where good hygiene and social distancing are center stage, there is no justification for us to be using cash still. Cash is known to carry pathogens which includes harmful viruses that get picked up as it exchanges hands over a hundred times a year on average.

cash carries dangerous pathogens
Source: Getty Images

In contrast, you have hygienic control over your card or cell phone, no one else uses these things but you and you can sanitize them at will. Whereas, you can never track down the origin of cash notes or sanitize it effectively. Another point of contact for contracting an infectious disease is the terminals you use to extract your cash, ATMs.

Loyalty Integration

Another ease that comes with going cashless is easy integrations with existing loyalty programs. Instead of issuing a separate loyalty card that needs to be presented at every checkout, merchants can integrate the customers debit/credit card or mobile wallet info with their loyalty program eliminating the need for a separate card. And customers no longer have to worry about presenting a separate card every time they check out to secure their points.

Safe & Secure

Additionally, the safety and security of cashless transactions is unmatched. Cash is a physical asset that can be stolen or damaged easily by malicious actors. however, credit cards and mobile wallets simply bridge your cash and facilitate transactions without ever physically moving any assets. Cards, even if stolen, can’t be charged without the holder’s unique PIN code and can be remotely disabled as well.

debit card safety & security
Source: iStock

It even benefits store owners and merchants as they don’t run a risk of holding too much cash at one time that may be prone to theft. They also incur costs handling cash, transporting it to a bank at the end of every day and so on.

Don’t Alienate Cash Customers

Going cashless seems like a no brainer then, however there are still cash customers who are skeptical to switch to cashless. These customers need to try the product before committing fully and banks don’t really offer this option. They need a prepaid service where they can test out cashless payments without a lengthy onboarding process.

cash customer
Source: Shutterstock

Reverse ATMs are the solution for cash customers; they enable users to convert their cash to card in a matter of seconds. The user is left with a prepaid, active Visa or Mastercard that they can use at any POS terminal that accepts EMV cards. They also obtain all the security and safety benefits of having a debit card from any bank.

azimut reverse atm
Source: Azimut

These kiosks can be installed in any public venue with heavy customer traffic to enable cashless transactions for all.

Better CX

To conclude: Enhancing customer experience is all about streamlining the purchase process as much as possible for your customer, from eliminating wait times to offering self checkout, you need to make sure your customer’s needs are met. Going cashless is a step in the right direction to enhance customer journeys and create loyal customers.

Nausherwan Beg
Naushervan has multiple years of experience in banking and telecom spanning origination and consulting, including advising financial industry regulators. He heads the global sales team for Azimut's Self Service solution portfolio for Banks and Mobile Financial services.

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