Introducing Quick Bills — a secure and flexible payments option
This is a series of posts introducing Quick Bill — a new tool that helps merchants and freelancers accept payments internationally. If you wish to read Part I, please click here: https://medium.com/safepay/introducing-quick-bill-a-url-that-gets-you-paid-8e9ea4669e0a
Last time we wrote about our observations of how the current market in Pakistan operates in the digital world and we highlighted some of the ingenious ways entrepreneurs have managed to circumvent the global restrictions placed on Pakistani businesses. We also wrote about some of the problems these hacks come with especially in a country where there is limited trust in the online world. Towards the end we left you with a clue about what we think is the right solution to this problem. Read on to find out if you share our beliefs.
It started with a seed of an idea that came from one of our clients. He asked us if it was possible to email or text his buyers a link after they had placed an order on his store. We started exploring this idea further and today we’re excited to announce the general availability of Quick Bills — the most flexible payment option for all types of businesses.
What is a Quick Bill?
Simply put, a Quick Bill is a request for payment in the form of a link created by a merchant or freelancer that can be sent through any medium to a customer. When the link is clicked, the customer is taken to Safepay’s secure hosted page that details how much money the business is requesting and for what. The customer simply chooses to complete the payment with Safepay Checkout using his Visa or MasterCard debit or credit card and the funds hit your Safepay business account the next day.
Why did we build it?
Besides the fact that our client asked us to build it (haha), we thought about whether it could have other use cases for different types of businesses.
Freelancers in Pakistan account for a significant proportion of the countries exports and yet no one has built a solution for them to accept payments from their international clientele. With Quick Bills we hope freelancers can email their clients an invoice detailing the breakdown of their work along with our payment link that their clients can use to complete the payment. Our hope is that we can solve the recurring problem freelancers face are facing with accepting international and local payments.
Merchants often complain about abandoned payments when using cash on delivery, or bouncing cheques from fraudulent customers, or their delivery partners refusing to disburse payments collected on their behalf. Profit Magazine wrote a great article about this:
With Quick Bills, merchants can either request full payment up front before shipping the product, or even request partial payment to secure purchase intent. For example, a merchant shipping an expensive mobile phone to a new customer could ask for half of the payment up front and collect the remaining as cash upon delivery. Flexibility is at the core of this product.
Businesses running co-working spaces can request monthly dues from their clients by emailing them a Quick Bill every month to collect any outstanding payments.
ISPs providing cloud hosting and internet services to international and local clients can collect recurring payments by sending a Quick Bill along with their traditional invoices.
The more we thought about it, the more use cases we came up with. Quick Bills could really prove to be the flexible payments options for merchants and consumers.
With Quick Bills we hope that established businesses and freelancers alike can
securely track their billing and make payments faster and easier for their clients’, whether they are nearby or international. Quick Bills can accept most cards and will instantly transfer funds to your Safepay business account.
If you’re interested in using Quick Bills to power your business, read our tutorial by clicking here: https://medium.com/safepay/introducing-quick-bills-how-to-get-started-97619551fd7
As always, please leave your thoughts and advice in the comments below and help us shape the service Pakistan deserves!
