Funding involves providing a business with the financial resources which may be in the form of money or other values. The business has several options when it comes to funding, they can use credit, equity, venture capital, grants, subsidies, donations, taxes among others. The types of funding that are available to a business will depend on several factors such as asset base, credit history, its cash flows, reputation among others.
A business needs to put measures in place to help in the attraction of cheaper and reliable ways of funding. Cheaper funding means that a business will not spend a huge amount of its revenue refinancing through interest payment. More ..
E-payment gateway control
The electronic payment system has become popular mainly due to the growing spread of online-based experience. As we advance more we are likely to see more of these payment systems as well as payment processing tools. It is given that this increase coupled with an improved secure platform, we are likely to see the substantial drop in the usage of traditional payment systems such as check and cash transactions. E- Payment or electronic payment system denotes a way of making transactions through an electronic medium, where one does not have to use cheques and cash. Among the most popular e-payment systems are credit and debit cards. Besides these, we have alternative methods which include electronic wallets, smart cards, cryptocurrencies wallet, and bank transfers among others.
Electronic payment systems are meant to facilitate the acceptance of payments when conducting online transactions. Following are the benefits that are derived through use of electronic payment systems: ability to reach more customers, spread all over the world, they are more efficient and effective transactions which come with simplicity and speed, they offer great convenience as they can be accessed anytime and anywhere as long as one has internet connectivity, they attract lower costs, they help customers control expenses, they are easy to add to a web platform as well as offering high-level security and curbing money laundering and fraud.
With a payment gateway, which is an online business application system which allows credit card payment, a business can leverage security and convenience that is brought by such a platform. Consumers can buy products or services online, where they fill out the credit card details. The online store will then send the data which the customer has entered the payment gateway for authorization and processing of payment. The payment gateway will verify the customer information if it matches the payment will be approved and the money will then be transferred to the merchant account. Some of the popular payment gateways are Braintree, PayPal, Skrill, Moneybookers among others. The main feature of these platforms is that one does not have to change the bank accounts or do anything special to have to get up running with the payment processing. Also, it is easy to integrate the systems with the online store. The downside of these platforms is that they may come with high transaction fees and customers are always sent to offsite when they want to make payments, this incidentally reduces the conversion rates of these eCommerce stores.
Research
This is the stage where information about the product is collected; it also involves getting insights on customer, competition or close analogs. It is important to get statistics on the use of the current systems as well as analyses on the devices of the intended users. It is at this stage that the business engages with the developer and gets acquainted with them. This allows in ascertaining their capabilities and limitations. This stage helps in understanding the interface and whom it is meant for, the limitation is should be done as well as ways of doing it.