WhatsApp Payments: 8 Reasons Why It’s Not Apt For Businesses
This is a re-post of the original post on PayUmoney Blog.
The world is changing rapidly, marketplace is changing remarkably and so are the payment methods! WhatsApp introduced its payments feature recently. Here we will discuss the most talked about WhatsApp business app and it’s payment feature! Today, WhatsApp has a user base of over 1.3 billion users. This instant messaging app has been one of the most preferred modes for small businesses to reach out to their customers. The reason being, the time and efforts put in for website development, making and accepting payments and more are saved! It’s good to understand how businesses can use WhatsApp to sell products.
Rowing back to WhatsApp payments, no app is perfect and WhatApp faces a similar situation. There are a few vital payment features which WhatsApp payments lacks:
- Pay using Credit/debit cards, Net banking or wallets- It supports only UPI Payments
- Refund the amount, just in case required
- Track business reports
- Create payment links
Reasons Why WhatsApp Payments Is Not Apt For Businesses
Let’s assume Natasha owns an online textile business in India and she has a good customer base. She chose WhatsApp to carry her business forward. Keeping this example in mind, let us talk about the following points:
Privacy
With all the buzz about WhatsApp payments, one thing still remains unanswered is,are WhatsApp payments really secured? WhatsApp stores information such as amount, date, time, frequency and so on. In Natasha’s case, all the private information her customers share with her while ordering products will get saved automatically. Hence, the question of one’s privacy arises here.
Supports Only UPI Payments
As we know that the Indian economy is heavily promoting “digital payments, digital India” concept which supports multiple online payment methods (credit/debit cards, net-banking, UPI, wallets and so on), WhatsApp payments comes up with only one mode of payments i.e UPI payments!
Even though UPI is a quick and easy payment method, not everyone prefers paying with it. Especially when it comes to low tech-savvy customers. With WhatsApp payments, customers have only one option to choose: UPI to make payments. This eventually leads to high payment drop off’s and hence loss in business! So, referring to Natasha’s example above, while she sells through the leading communications app, not all of her customers will be aware of the UPI payments. Hence, she might face a hurdle when it comes to payment collection.
Only Contacts Can Pay You
WhatsApp payments allows you to send quick messages, etc., but where does it also lack? It only allows your contacts to pay you! Which means, only contact numbers of people in your list can pay you. In Natasha’s case above, if she wants to reach out to masses and sell her products, she will manually have to save the numbers in order to accept payments. Thus, boiling down to a huge investment of time and hard work.
No Business Reports
Any online business would want to track the number of people reached, number of people who paid and sales profits. While WhatsApp payments provides you with the ease of running your business, it fails to share a detailed sales reports.
If Natasha wants to track how many people have actually paid, it will take her hours altogether to sort all the information! Hence, one big thing that WhatsApp payments left behind is the tracking feature.
No Refunds
As per the example stated above, customer buy products from Natasha, but they are dissatisfied after receiving it, in this case WhatsApp fails to support refunds. Practically, this is not the feature that will not be apt for you or your customers in the long run.
Lacks Support And Customer Care
‘A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.’ — Michael LeBoeuf
The app may not have many business friendly features or functions, it still is a huge win-win platform for businesses. Let us say Natasha faces some issues as she sells her products via WhatsApp. Certainly, she will like to reach out for support. Unfortunately WhatsApp lacks support and customer care, making a simple problem.
No International Payments Accepted
At a time when we are a global village, the economy is no more limited to the country’s borders. There are re sellers present in the corners of the world hosting an online business worldwide. This calls for international payment acceptance on a platform that hosts payment services. But unfortunately the most used messaging app globally does not accept international payments yet.
As hypothetically stated above, Natasha has a wide customer base and one of her customer from Tokyo is interested in buying her products. Unfortunately, with WhatsApp payments, she will be restricted to providing her services to just Indian customers as the app doesn’t support International payments.
No Payment Links Can Be Shared
Natasha has to clear a huge amount from her customers which is pending. Sending a text message individually to every customer is a very tedious task for her. It would be a good idea or option if WhatsApp helped her to generate a unique payment links which are shareable with her customers!
Here’s where Natasha can be smart and make use of PayUnow app as a business owner.
So with PayUnow, Natasha Or Any Business Can:
- Accept payments directly in bank account
- All payment modes supported (credit/debit cards, net banking, wallets, UPI and more) to customers
- Create and share payment links via WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS, Email and more.
- Enjoy no monthly collection limit
- Process secured online payments
PayUnow comes with more exclusive and interesting features which you can check out on PayUnow official website. Also, accepting payments from customers on PayUnow is quiet simple:
- Create Free PayUnow Account
- Create payment request
- Share payment links with the customer
- Get money directly in your bank account
Today, more and more businesses are going online and hence choosing the right partner for payments is a priority! WhatsApp payments is a P2P (peer to peer) payment feature app, but for businesses it is sensible to make way for easy and flexible payment partners such as PayUnow. What are you waiting for then? SignUp with PayUnow!
