The market size for QR code payments at a global level is expected to exceed USD 51.58 billion by 2032 after growing at a rate of 16.5% annually. And it doesn’t come as a surprise. With internet and smartphone penetration rapidly increasing, more and more people are going online to shop for everything from essentials to luxuries. Plus, the recent health pandemic effectively highlighted the importance of getting transactions done while minimizing touch. Hence, contactless payments are in vogue and modern businesses in the UAE are jumping on the bandwagon in droves.

QR code invoicing for digital payments is especially disrupting the landscape by facilitating fast, smooth, and efficient transactions. Since a quick scan is all it takes to go through with this payment, QR codes are simplifying life for both merchants like you and consumers. Continue reading to understand how QR code invoicing works and the many benefits of such a payment system.

Decoding QR Code Payment Systems

QR code invoicing for digital payments essentially requires merchants to generate a code that represents relevant payment details. After a customer uses their smartphone to scan this code, the payment gets processed via an already-linked banking app or digital wallet. There is no need to involve any cash, physical cards, or point-of-sale machines. The process is explained here in more detail:

• With the help of an electronic invoicing system (like the one offered by PayTabs), you can churn out QR codes that encrypt multiple aspects of a payment, like date, merchant information, transaction amount, VAT details, and any unique identifier.
• The customer, after receiving the QR code, scans the same. Payment details show up once the code is decoded.
• Relevant information is then conveyed to the customer’s banking app or digital wallet. Once the payment is authorized, it gets processed via a secure gateway.
• Lastly, both you and the customer receive confirmation that the transaction has taken place. Payment details are also recorded for auditing and reconciliation.

Now, let’s find out why QR codes are the future of mobile payments.

Advantages of QR Code Payment Systems

QR codes are among the top digital invoicing trends that will impact the future of payments in more ways than one. Here are the key reasons why that is so:

• Instant Payment Processing

The ‘scan and pay’ feature of QR codes allows them to save a customer’s time and energy dramatically. It just takes a few seconds for someone to scan a code and pay via the desired method. This means, the transaction or checkout process is hassle-free and satisfactory. Even in a physical store or eatery, QR codes facilitate speedy and contactless payments, thereby minimizing the transfer of germs. The instant payment processing attribute helps your brand to make a positive impression on customers and boosts loyalty.

• Accessibility

It is easy to scan a QR code as long as the customer has a smartphone with a camera and access to internet. There is no need for them to carry cash or cards. This is good news for a wide range of demographics, including those who are still unbanked. In other words, QR code payment systems make it possible for your business to reach out to different kinds of consumers in terms of age, gender, socio-economic situations, and education levels. You get to sell and earn more.

• Multiple Currencies Accepted

Here is another reason why QR codes are increasingly emerging as one of the best mobile payment solutions in the UAE and elsewhere. When you partner with a provider like PayTabs for your e-invoicing needs, you can send QR code invoices to customers in any part of the world. They can scan and pay in their local currencies, which makes for a comfortable and familiar experience. Your funds will get settled in the home currency though. Foreign customers will not only trust your business more this way, but will also feel deeper engagement and choose to come back for repeat orders. Hence, expanding to new geographies is easy with QR codes.

• Cost-Effectiveness

QR code invoicing for digital payments can also help you save a lot more money than conventional PoS systems. The requirements to get started are quite basic and transaction fees are also affordable. So, if you are running a startup or small business, offering a QR code payment system can help you control costs significantly.

• Robust Security

Facilitating payments through QR codes reduces the scope of card-related frauds like card cloning, account takeover, skimming, application scam, and phishing. Moreover, the customer’s payment details are encrypted with advanced techniques and processed via safe channels to minimize data breaches.

• Analytical Insights

Top providers of QR code payment systems make sure you can obtain statements for all the invoices paid. You can also track and control payments from a single, unified dashboard. This not only streamlines your financial operations, but also helps you to derive actionable insights from all the payment-related data collected. This can, in turn, enable you to make more informed decisions in the coming years and spot any gaps in the payment system and bridge the same.

QR Codes are Indeed the Future of Mobile Payments

Did you know that in 2020, 1.5 billion people around the world made payments using QR codes? And by next year, almost 30% of all mobile phone users are also expected to pay via QR codes. These codes are dominating digital invoicing trends for multiple reasons, as discussed above – instant payment processing, accessibility, multiple currency acceptance, security, cost-effectiveness, and analytical capabilities. Being contactless, QR code payment systems are also making the world a safer place and empowering even unbanked consumers to purchase what they need or want. It is especially the way to go if you own a small business or startup and want to invest conservatively in your payment ecosystem for now.

So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with PayTabs to discuss your requirements, explore our services, and kick-start QR code invoicing. As a leading payments infrastructure company with presence across the MENA region, PayTabs offers avant-garde solutions for the sake of local commerce and financial inclusion. Our dream is to power all digital transactions with safe, simple, and scalable solutions.

Did you know that it can cost you five times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one? Also, the success rate of selling to a current customer is 60% to 70%, which is significantly higher than the success rate in case of a new one (5% to 20%). So, it’s evident that improving loyalty and retaining customers is essential for your UAE business to survive and thrive. And if you have a subscription-based business, an efficient repeat billing module can go a long way in accomplishing the same.

Whether you run a gym or club, sell magazines or SaaS solutions, or offer advertising services, a recurring billing system can help you charge customers at predefined intervals and in an ongoing manner. This will translate to a continuous stream of revenue for you and a smooth, convenient experience for consumers. Let’s delve deeper into this and look at how you can enhance retention with subscription billing flexibility.

Is Repeat Billing the Same as Subscription Billing?

While repeat billing and subscription billing are two terms that are often used interchangeably, the first one only refers to the recurring payment aspect of a subscription-based model. In this, after registering, a customer shares their payment details, authorizes your business to store the same, and chooses payment intervals.

On the other hand, subscription billing includes the recurring payment process as well as flexible payment options such as different pricing models, free trials, renewals, downgrades, and upgrades. However, since most subscription-based businesses offer customers flexible payment options nowadays, repeat billing essentially means subscription billing.

Subscription Billing: How It Works

This is what happens in a subscription or repeat billing model:

• The customer picks a pricing plan and payment method as per their needs and convenience.
• They allow your billing software to store their payment information.
• When a new billing cycle commences, your payment service provider automatically charges the pre-approved amount of money to the customer’s card. Post approval, the sum gets transferred to your account.
• The customer receives a notification about the transaction, and in case the payment fails, they are sent further instructions.
• Based on a set schedule, the customer’s preferred payment method is charged indefinitely until they cancel or pause the plan.

How to Optimize Business Retention with Subscription Billing

The fact that the ecommerce subscription market at a global level is set to reach USD 904.28 billion by 2026 indicates that more and more businesses are adopting the recurrent billing model. If you too want to join the bandwagon and leverage repeat billing as one of the business retention strategies, join hands with an end-to-end payment solution provider like PayTabs. It is easy to integrate with your subscription model and you can drive customer retention with the following tips:

1. Strategize Pricing:

Offer different kinds of or customizable subscription plans so your customers can pay as per their convenience. After all, not everyone will want to pay a lot of money in one go with an annual subscription. You can also choose to reward subscribers based on their loyalty through special discounts and offers. Cross-sell and upsell wherever possible, so you can make customers happy while augmenting your revenue.

2. Make It Easy to Save Payment Details:

Allowing subscribers to save their card or digital wallet details easily means accelerating their future checkouts. When they don’t have to feed the payment information repeatedly, customer satisfaction will shoot up, which means a higher retention rate.

3. Offer Flexibility:

Remove any point of friction when a customer wants to modify, stop, or restart their subscription. You can ensure subscription billing flexibility by waiving late payment fees if it’s a rare occurrence, simplifying plan upgrades and downgrades, and providing alternate solutions in case of cancellation.

4. Automate Invoicing:

Though most repeat billing modules involve the automatic deduction of a pre-specified fee from the customer’s chosen payment option, if required, you can generate and send standardized and professional invoices. This will not only save your time and effort, but also allow subscribers to check the payment date and amount quickly so they are prepared for it. This can make a favorable impression and boost retention.

5. Provide Multiple Payment Modes:

With a recurrent billing solution provider like PayTabs, you can allow customers to pay through debit and credit cards, internet banking, digital wallets, apps, and even QR codes. This is another form of subscription billing flexibility that will help them choose from multiple options and stick to your brand for many years.

6. Accept Multiple Currencies:

Recurrent billing is one of the key business retention strategies even if you have international subscribers. Just make sure your payment system accepts currencies from around the world but settles your funds in the home currency. By allowing foreign customers to pay in their local currencies, you can win their trust, confidence, and loyalty.

7. Offer Robust Security:

In a repeat billing model, the weekly, monthly or annual fee usually gets deducted from the customer’s payment method automatically. This means, any sensitive information must be secured at all times. So, adopt a payment solution that is PCI DSS compliant and uses advanced encryption and authentication techniques against a variety of scams and frauds.

Gather Analytical Insights: Adopt a repeat billing module that lets you analyze large amounts of data in different ways and gather insights about patterns and trends in consumer behavior and preferences. This will help you improve the payment system or introduce more flexibility and convenience in the future.

Repeat Billing: An Effective Way to Optimize Business Retention

So, by now, you have a fair idea about what is recurrent billing, how it works, and why it is deemed as one of the best business retention strategies for subscription-based ventures. You can partner with PayTabs to leverage a holistic repeat billing model and handle everything from subscription billing flexibility and automated invoicing to strategic pricing, cybersecurity, and data analytics. Additionally, you can offer customers multiple modes of payment and accept currencies from around the world to scale beyond borders.

As a leading payments infrastructure company in MENA, PayTabs aims to power all digital transactions and offers sophisticated solutions to drive financial inclusion and local commerce. So, it is time you make the most of our simple, safe, and scalable solutions, and take your subscription-based business to new heights.

The days of manually creating, issuing, and managing invoices are gradually fading into oblivion owing to the inefficiency, slowness, and labor-intensiveness of the process. The fact that 39% of manual invoices have been found to contain mistakes is a big enough wakeup call for most business owners. Naturally, invoice automation is increasingly gaining popularity as it is helping companies reduce overall costs and strengthen the bottom line. In fact, by 2031, the size of the global e-invoicing market is expected to hit USD 62.68 billion.

So, what does the future of invoicing hold for a merchant like you? How can you leverage technology for better operational efficiency and profitability? Well, as a leading provider of online invoicing tools across the MENA region, PayTabs is making it hassle-free to manage multiple customers as well as invoices. Read on to know how you can capitalize on it.

How PayTabs is Simplifying Client Billing

Of the various PayTabs payment solutions available to UAE merchants, electronic invoicing deserves special mention as everything happens over the internet and requires no manual intervention. Invoice generation is an automated process too and there is a lot you can do to make it specific for your business. Let’s delve into the multiple advantages of partnering with PayTabs for automated invoice processing:

• Customization: Choose from multiple themes for your invoices and even more than one for the payment page. You can also add logos and change the color of the header and footer to align the invoice with your brand.
• Easy Give and Take: With PayTabs, send invoices to your customers or receive the same from vendors via SMS, email, social media channels, WhatsApp, or QR codes. You can easily generate a QR code that contains details like date, seller name, unique identifiers, VAT, total payable amount, etc. Receiving payments electronically against the invoices is also a cakewalk.
• Support for Multiple Payment Methods and Currencies: Payment gateway integration with PayTabs allows you to offer various payment modes and accept multiple currencies from around the world. With the electronic invoicing system, you can also generate and share invoices in line with your product listings in different countries (and hence, multiple currencies). When customers see the payable amount in a currency familiar to them, they can process the invoice fast.
• Multiple Invoice Management: From a single dashboard, you can track and manage multiple invoices of multiple customers without missing out on anything. You can check the ones that are pending or paid and even set and send reminders automatically. In case you run a subscription-based business and deal with recurring payments, PayTabs’ e-invoicing system helps by automating invoice generation and sharing them at pre-specified intervals for different customers.
• Cost Reduction: Through automated invoice processing, you can save significantly on labor and overhead costs. After all, the more the number of customers, the higher will be these costs if you take the manual route.
• Enhanced Accuracy: Accuracy is vital when you are sending invoices. But ensuring it manually for multiple customers and invoices is a challenge. Incorrect invoices can create a poor impression on customers though, lead to back-and-forth and delayed payments, and waste time. With PayTabs, you can eliminate human errors, no matter how many customers you serve or how big the transaction volume.
• Better Cash Flow: By using online invoicing tools, send invoices and receive payments on time. Even if you have a large base of customers, you won’t skip anyone or forget to send a particular month’s or quarter’s invoice accidentally. Consequently, your cash flow will improve.
• Reduced Paperwork: Managing multiple customers and invoices manually means storing, tracking, and managing innumerable files and documents. The process is cumbersome, papers are prone to misplacement, and it’s not environment-friendly. With invoice automation, eliminate or at least minimize paperwork, go green, and record every stage of the invoicing process for greater financial accountability, traceability, and transparency.
• Greater Security: Physical financial documents can be easily tampered with or stolen. However, with PayTabs’ e-invoicing solution, you can keep all confidential data safe, comply with industry regulations, and earn customer trust.
• Data-Backed Insights: PayTabs e-invoicing is not just perfect for simplifying client billing, but also for deriving actionable insights from the analysis of all the data collected on customer payments, cash flow, payment timelines, and so on. This way, you can detect pain points, improve your invoicing system further, boost customer experience, and increase your profit margin.

Effective Tips to Manage Multiple Customers and Invoices

While PayTabs undoubtedly makes your life easy in the ways discussed above, here are a few things you can do to make the most of our invoice automation feature:

• Define Terms and Policies Clearly

Communicate details like your contact information, due dates, billing frequency, preferred currency and payment method, charges for late payment, and policies regarding cancellation and refund clearly to the customer. This will minimize the scope of disputes, confusion, and ensure that both parties are on the same page.

• Organize Clients and Invoices

When it comes to automated invoice processing, organize multiple clients and invoices in a way you understand. You can do so by using labels, folders, tags, or assigning client codes and invoice numbers. Sorting invoices based on date, amount, status, and priority can also help. This way, you can track payments and balances easily.

• Regularly Review Invoices and Update

This is necessary to make sure your invoices are complete, correct, and updated. Doing it weekly at least is highly recommended. Remember to check and revise details like number, date, amount, invoice, status, comments, feedback, etc. during the review.

• Be Prompt with Follow-Up

When you have multiple clients and invoices to deal with, be prompt with payment follow-ups. Send reminders before the due date and automate payment confirmations and thank-you notes. This will augment your cash flow and improve relations with customers.

• Request Feedback

Request customers to rate, review, or share suggestions based on your invoicing system. You can also create short surveys and polls to capture valuable data. This will help you detect any issues with the invoicing process, work on them, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Partner with PayTabs for Invoice Automation Today

In a nutshell, leveraging online invoicing tools from PayTabs makes it a breeze to manage multiple customers and invoices. It is as easy to create, customize, and share invoices as it is to receive payments on time. You can manage it all from a single dashboard, accept multiple currencies, ensure accuracy, lower costs and paperwork, save time, enhance cash flow, boost security, and even obtain data-backed insights.

So, get in touch and get started. As MENA’s top payments infrastructure company, PayTabs offers advanced solutions to promote financial inclusion and local commerce. We aim to power every single digital transaction in the region with our scalable, simple, and secure solutions.