Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) receive roughly 38% of their sales from buyers with whom they work on an irregular, ad hoc basis — once, twice, maybe a few times a year, according to “Fixing Small Business Payments,” a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration. These payments may include commission payments, payments for freelance or contract work, or invoice payments for products sold to other businesses.
Get the report: Fixing Small Business Payments: How Instant Payments Help Buyers Solve The Ad Hoc Payments Problem
Thirty percent of those payments are received late. What’s more, 60% of the late payments are received one month or more after they are due.
For SMBs looking to put their ad hoc payments on the books as quickly as possible, instant payments can be an attractive payment option. In fact, 75% of SMBs would be “very” or “extremely” likely to continue business relationships with buyers that offer free instant payment options. That’s more than those that say the same of buyers that offer any other payment feature.
The majority of all SMBs — 54% — would even pay extra for the ability to receive ad hoc vendor payments instantly. Interest in paying an added fee for instant payments options is particularly high among SMBs that already receive at least one instant payment per year. Sixty-eight percent of these SMBs would be “very” or “extremely” willing to pay an added fee if it meant being able to receive instant ad hoc payments if they so choose.
Even SMBs that have never used instant payments before could be persuaded to pay an added fee to use them. Twenty-six percent of these never-before users say they would be “very” or “extremely” willing to pay such a fee to receive their ad hoc payments instantly.
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