When you’re first starting your business, you create processes for everything. As your business grows and evolves, those processes often get taken along for the ride. But whether you’ve been in business for one year or 50, taking the time to evaluate your processes and implement new ones can help you save both time and money.

Take payments for example. Perhaps when you started your business, you got paper cheques - and used them to pay suppliers as invoices came in. As you grew, you implemented some new payment methods - as requested or required by your suppliers. But really, you didn’t put much thought specifically into making strategic payment decisions that would help you set your business up for success long-term.

Ask yourself these questions to see if your current process for making and receiving payments is working for your business or against it.

1. How much are you currently spending on payment fees?
2. Are your payment methods secure?
3. Are your current payment methods instantaneous?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you can start to make more strategic decisions regarding payments in order to save money, save time, and increase your security.

Cost compare to save money

As your business grows, it’s important to take the time to look at your transactions and their associated costs. Single payment costs add up quickly and it might be better for you to consider bulk payment solutions like EFTs (Direct Deposit). But also consider the time it takes for you to do transactions. Using Interac e-Transfer for Business can reduce time and cost for both making and receiving payments. In fact, many digital payments solutions are automated or can be run in bulk to reduce cost compared to alternatives like wires or cheques.

Double check your transaction security

Fraud is on the rise. More and more businesses are being targeted by malicious criminals. And no business thinks it will be a target, until it is. That’s why every business needs to consider the risk involved in transactions. For example, EFTs and wire transfers require you to input the account details of where the funds will be deposited so that a payment cannot be intercepted by fraudsters. Choosing payment methods that maximize security is good for your business and helps you demonstrate to your clients that you take their security seriously as well.

New options deliver instantly

Keeping track of your day-to-day, and month-to-month cash flow is time consuming and can be unreliable when waiting for cheques to clear or payments to process. With modern solutions you can send and receive instantly. Plus with digital remittance data, reconciliation and accounting can be quicker and easier.

By considering easy to adopt and valuable solutions like Interac e-Transfer for Business, you’re one step closer to saving your business both time and money. And once you start down that path, your business might find other efficiencies to explore.