Offering customers option to pay direct to bank account

[ymk101]

We redoing our checkout pages any thought about offering to pay direct to the bank?

 

[ecoleman]

1. What benefit is there to the customer to do this? None. It simply removes any kind of protection the customer would have should something go wrong.

2. It's not convenient. So I place an order with you, write down your bank details, login to my online banking, set you up as a payee, make a payment, hope to god you deliver because I've just lost any protection I may have if you are dodgy

 

[GraemeL]

We redoing our checkout pages any thought about offering to pay direct to the bank?

There is a benefit to offer this. We deal with a number of public bodies who will only pay this way, after receipt of an invoice. They ask us if they can and if we agree we set it up only on their account.

However, I would not offer it to all and sundry - it does mean more admin for you to watch out for payments and obviously if you choose to send the products before payment there is a risk.

 

[cautiouscapy]

Depends on your margins I suppose; I'm sure that's obvious but there's admin involved.

 

[Payment Expert]

Paying direct to the bank can help to save on merchant services fees and it potentially will decrease the amount of chargebacks. So it really makes sense to do that that’s why many gateways suggest both options through one API.

 

[Raw Rob]

We offer that as an option, and some customers do use it. Tiny bit more admin for me to check when a payment is received. but zero merchant fees so I'm not complaining.

 

[AsifDilshad]

Its really a bad move though, user will not do bank transfer ever. Use online payment systems like paypal etc

 

[GraemeL]

Its really a bad move though, user will not do bank transfer ever. Use online payment systems like paypal etc

Nonsense

 

[chalkie99]

Its really a bad move though, user will not do bank transfer ever. Use online payment systems like paypal etc

What utter c**p.

We take direct transfers from businesses large and small. There is not a lot of admin to it and, as Raw Rob says, the saving in merchant fees makes it worthwhile. Most of our monthly accounts now pay by BACS and we find a lot of ad hoc customers via the net choose to pay this way too.

 

[AsifDilshad]

We have direct payment option along with online solution like Paypal but in our case, user ever pay directly to bank account probably it’s because of B2C case. It’s my opinion you can disagree with me but this is not a right way,

 

[GraemeL]

It’s my opinion you can disagree with me but this is not a right way,

Why not? You did. You said this:-

user will not do bank transfer ever.c

after I had posted this:-

We deal with a number of public bodies who will only pay this way

 

[14Steve14]

I sell online mainly to consumers and not businesses, I offer papal, cheque and BACS. I get only one or two bacs payments a month. I possible get 5 or 6 cheque payments a month, but I do supply to many of the older generation, so it could be expected. I have even had people send me cash. The rest are debit and credit cards through PayPal. I have tried discounting the cart price when someone pays by BACS but there is no uptake.

A friend of mine sells online and over the counter mainly to trade customers on account and he get 75 percent plus paying with BACS.

What i am trying to say is that it depends on your customer base, and what they prefer. It may help if you offer a wide range of payment options, as they will get used, but many prefer to pay by card, with the added protection it gives them.

 

[ecoleman]

Certainly if you sell a lot to B2B customers who may also have an account with you then BACS can be well worth it, but for an ecommerce site selling to joe public, it's not going to happen.

 

[wayzgoose]

Certainly if you sell a lot to B2B customers who may also have an account with you then BACS can be well worth it, but for an ecommerce site selling to joe public, it's not going to happen.

Until along comes a Council or such like, that wants to replace all their computer power units - it doesn't do any harm to have it as an option. Our sales from our main site are 99% to the public and then, only this morning, along came the training section of a Premiership football club that wanted to buy their own Club keyrings - they paid by BACS.

 

[ecoleman]

Councils and schools very often contact us for replacing laptop batteries and/or chargers but will normally request a 30 day account. In that case we provide them with our bank details so that they can make a BACS payment when payment is due.

We would never offer BACS as a payment option on our checkout.

I'm not saying you should never accept a BACS payment, just that it's not really a viable payment method on an ecommerce site.

 

[GraemeL]

This thread has made me think again - so I have thanked the OP

We redoing our checkout pages any thought about offering to pay direct to the bank?

Maybe we should offer BACs as an option. Is this Bacs?

http://www.bacs.co.uk/Bacs/Corporate/Pages/default.aspx

Anyone know if there is a Logo that 'most' people associate with BACS?

G

 

[Newchodge]

BACS is a very specific payment method used by organisations that make multiple payments. Many people use the term BACS when they mean online banking. This explains it a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACS

 

[GraemeL]

BACS is a very specific payment method used by organisations that make multiple payments. Many people use the term BACS when they mean online banking. This explains it a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACS

Of course! Thank you. So do you think the term to use at Checkout would be 'Pay by Online Banking' ?

G

 

[wayzgoose]

I must stop doing 6 things at the same time - I'm talking about online banking not BACS !

 

[Raw Rob]

Certainly if you sell a lot to B2B customers who may also have an account with you then BACS can be well worth it, but for an ecommerce site selling to joe public, it's not going to happen.

To clarify, it used to be called BACS, until "Faster Payments" came along a couple of years ago, but most people still refer to it as BACS. As I said above, we do offer it as a payment method, selling to the general public, and people do use it. In the past we got a few people clicking on it not quite knowing what it was, assuming that we were somehow going to take the money direct from their account, but now I've put this on our site "Bank Transfer (BACS) - you must contact your bank to send the payment." and we've had no problems.

 

[ecoleman]

As said above BACS is an old terms which many people still use to describe a bank transfer. I don't think there are many people that actually realise these are two different services.
If you want to provide this as an option, personally, I would say "Pay by Bank Transfer (BACS)"

 

[mtools]

We have direct payment option along with online solution like Paypal but in our case, user ever pay directly to bank account probably it’s because of B2C case. It’s my opinion you can disagree with me but this is not a right way,

it's not an opinion when you say "user will not do bank transfer ever" and people demonstrate occasions when they have received payments by bank transfer (i have as well for both consumers and businesses)

 

[Pish_Pash]

We have direct payment option along with online solution like Paypal but in our case, user ever pay directly to bank account probably it’s because of B2C case. It’s my opinion you can disagree with me but this is not a right way,

I disagree with you...it can be the right way....some European B2B customers in particular seem to be mildly aroused by using direct bank transfer.

 

[CompuGlobal-Hyper-MegaNet]

Offering bank transfer is fine.
It's no risk to you and saves you in fees.
If a customer takes you up on it, all good, if not, they'll pay by another conventional method.
If the customer is a regular one or you are a very trusted company, they won't mind. They'll only select that option if there's an advantage e.g. discount or convenience.
I prefer to pay by CC for S.75 protection, but I did once send £500 to HK to someone I'd never dealt with before purely because they had an outstanding reputation.

 

[fallschirmjaeger]

Just to add a slightly different slant on things:

We dont offer Bank Transfer or Cheque or Cash payments. BUT our customers ask for this - approx. 5% of all payments. they are low value but we are happy to take them. It does make us think we should offer this as a checkout option as I guess its always good to offer as many payments acceptance methods as possible.

 

[fallschirmjaeger]

Just to add to this - we use Bank Transfer to pay our suppliers in various countries mainly those who dont take paypal. There are probably cheaper ways of doing this as the bank charges are hefty £30 regardless of amount transferred!

 

[cazza]

We have offered Bank transfer for years and have customers who regularly pay this way, we have also received cash in the post (coins taped to a letter!), there are obviously customers out there who for whatever reason prefer to pay the way they want and not the way that is dictated to them (Paypal, Credit, Debit cards).

 

[japancool]

I believe this is quite common in Germany.

 

[Raw Rob]

There are probably cheaper ways of doing this as the bank charges are hefty £30 regardless of amount transferred!

There are, cheaper and better. Transferwise is one of them. (That's my affiliate link, you'll get a free transfer if you use it.) And Currency Fair is another. Both have both very low transaction fees (arround £3) and give better exchange rates than the bank. I've saved a fortune already and only been using them for a few months!