Helping SMEs Process Payments Quicker
In the steady growing world, we live in, the importance of being able to make a sale and process the payment as quickly as possible is no secret. This leads us to the problem of ‘point of sale devices’ who often depend on a clear signal to correctly function. This is not always possible in situations like festivals or after a blackout which South Africa has become accustomed to.
Technology
This led me to look at alternative ways of processing payments, bringing me to the NFC (Near-field Communication) technology that comes standard with most smartphones on the market. This would allow small business owners to use their mobile phone as a card reader through the ‘tap and go’ system debit and credit cards use for quick payments. By merely tapping the card on the interface would allow customers to pay for their desirables, which would be logged into a database, helping the SME keep track of all the funds being processed through the business. This would help SME’s process payments quicker and save them from the dreadful power cuts that terrorize small businesses in South Africa.
User Architecture
My research focused on how a card machines work and about the ‘tap and go’ system used in debit and credit cards. I found out that the system does not require any passwords to process the payments as long as the amount being paid is below the ‘tap and go’ restrictions of the financial institution. Payment happens in seconds. Mapping out the user journey, we want to make payment as quick and efficient as possible, add a system that keeps track of payments, store the information and display this for the business owner in an easy to consume format. Providing the SME’s an option to share a slip with their customer as proof of payment.
Wireframe
Wireframes are a skeleton of the final product in simplicity and keep the journey as minimal as possible, so I brought down the user journey to three screens. The card reader screen to enter the amount being added, the screen in which the card interaction takes place and the slip with an option to send the customer a copy of the slip to the customer.
Final Thoughts
The application adopts a card machine into and interface, using NFC technology that allows us to process a payment by merely placing a debit/credit card on the screen. This place in a mobile device allows us to achieve things we previously wouldn’t be able to do on a card machine. This allows us to track the progress of the user’s income and display it back to the user in an easy to consume format.
