Woman sitting on couch setting up her online store.

Why you need to set up your online store

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COVID-19 has well and truly defined and transformed the year 2020.

Gatherings have dwindled from hundreds of people to single digits and restrictions remain volatile.

Australians have had to adapt quickly to social distancing rules and limit their time spent out and about in the community. 

With these adaptations, we’re seeing consumers changing the way they spend their money to better accommodate more time spent at home.

As a result, merchants have had to adapt to this change and offer new and increasingly supported ways of shopping.

 

How are Australians shopping now?

Australians were forced to adapt and did so very quickly.

So quickly, panic buying began to set in.

Many pharmacies and grocery stores couldn’t keep up with the demand for toilet paper and hand sanitiser.

After panic buying caused concern for close contact in physical stores, a surge of online shopping began to develop.

Since March, Australian eCommerce growth skyrocketed up to over 73% since March 2019 (Aus Post, 2020).

And as conditions in Victoria continue to worsen, eCommerce is gaining momentum and reaching its highest peaks recorded this year.

The three top eCommerce growth categories were:

  1. Home and garden – up 82% since 2019
  2. Food and liquor – up 76% since 2019
  3. Health and beauty – up 71% since 2019

Surprisingly, the biggest shifts in purchases month on month were health and beauty, arts and crafts and books.

Seemingly, consumers are still making more online purchases than ever before and are purchasing things that help preoccupy them whilst they stay home.

There was also an evident shift from overseas orders to local orders.

57% of consumers said their reasons for opting for local stores over international stores was to support local Australian businesses and the economy.

So, with Australian consumers actively searching to support local Australian businesses and when they find them, they are purchasing more from them, should be a motivating enough factor for businesses to set up their online store.

 

Businesses need to respond to consumer demand

Physical businesses without an online store are likely missing out on a significant chunk of exposure and sales opportunity.

And it’s not just a temporary opportunity, with pockets of community transmission still occurring throughout Australia, storefront businesses could be required to close up at any time to stop the spread.

With an online store, businesses will have a safety net.

They will have the ability to continue making sales, no matter whether community transmission takes off in their local area.

In addition to responding to short term demand, there are also a number of benefits of setting up an eCommerce store in the long term including:

  • Diversifies your business and business offering
  • Online shopping appeals to an ever-growing number of Australian shoppers
  • Provides consumers with the added convenience to shop wherever and whenever
  • Gives businesses the opportunity to expand their business scope without incurring the heavy costs of expansion associated with physical storefronts

If you want to continue competing with your competitors and be supported by your fellow Aussies, you’re going to want to listen to consumer demand and respond to it promptly.

 

Set up your online store with LatPay

LatPay is a one-stop-shop payment gateway for online stores.

With LatPay you can enjoy:

  • Merchant services and facilities
  • Real-time payments
  • Direct debit facilities
  • Recurring payments
  • Alternative payments
  • Fraud management 
  • Hosted payment pages
  • Shopping carts
  • Mobile payment solutions
  • Payment links

If you’re ready to take a step in the right direction and set up an online store for your business, follow our helpful guide to setting up your eCommerce business and start reaping the rewards of a secure payment gateway with LatPay.

Alternatively, reach out to our friendly staff, and we’ll get you on your way to achieving greater sales with an online store.

Blockchain-biometrics

Payment and identity verification with blockchain & biometrics

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How does your business manage customer data and identification? 

As one of the most secure methods of data protection available, blockchain technology has quickly become the industry standard for securely accessing customer information and ensuring it never falls into the wrong hands. 

Harnessing this best-of-breed encryption technology, our partners at Nuggets have developed an innovative platform that combines blockchain with biometric authentication to deliver the first-ever identity and payment app to the Australian market. 

 

Nuggets: Leading the way in data security

Nuggets is a secure payment security and ID verification platform designed to streamline business processes and deliver exceptional data security to customers. Using industry-leading blockchain and biometric technology, Nuggets helps businesses to protect customer data while offering simplified validation and payment processes for businesses. 

Latpay + Nuggets

Latpay has teamed up with Nuggets to offer a complete solution to payment security. Utilising our PCI DSS compliant merchant facility and payment gateway, we can now offer businesses a simple and highly-secure option for ID verification and payment processing, both online and in person. 

How it works:

Nuggets stores customer data securely using blockchain technology. This essentially means that the data is encrypted and dispersed in chunks to be stored across a range of sources, and is only accessible by the customer themselves. Not even Nuggets can access it.

When a business requests ID verification, customers only share enough of the data stored to complete the verification or transaction. This means that businesses never need to store personal or sensitive data about their customers. 

Benefits of using Nuggets:

Developed with both businesses and consumers in mind, Nuggets delivers a wide range of benefits that ensure the security of all users while streamlining processes and improving customer experiences. 

 

Business Benefits:

Fraud mitigation 

Combining blockchain and biometric technology, Nuggets helps to mitigate the risks of identity fraud with a highly secure platform that puts data security back in the hands of the customer.

Compliance assurance

Minimise the hassles of regulatory compliance with a payment and identity verification system that boast compliance to the major governing bodies, including Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

Streamlined processes

Spend less time processing your customers with the ability to validate identification and verify payment methods in just seconds. Just send a request to your customer’s mobile and have complete confidence in the data provided – no second-guessing.  

No data, no breaches

Recent statistics show that around $527.8 million was lost over the previous financial year to card fraud in Australia, while the annual economic impact of identity fraud sits at around $2 billion. Mitigate the risks of a data breach and protect your business reputation by never storing customer data. If there’s no data, there’s no data to be breached. 

Secure payment processing 

Deploying Latpay’s secure payment technology, Nuggets delivers complete payment security using whichever payment method your customers prefer.

 

Consumer Benefits:

Protect your personal data

With none of their personal data collected or stored by your business, customers can feel confident in the protection of their personal data and therefore more comfortable doing business with you. 

Streamline identity verification

Customers can spend less time proving they are who they say they are with a pre-validated method of identification. A

Make payments simple

Using pre-loaded and pre-verified payment methods, customers can make payments in a few simple steps from their Nuggets app with the knowledge that their payment data will remain secure. 

No more passwords

With the capability to sign in via fingerprint scan or facial recognition, using Nuggets removes the need for pesky passwords. As well as sidestepping yet another password to remember, this also means reduced risk of phishing, malware or hijacking of phone accounts. 

 

Using Nuggets

Using the Nuggets platform for payment and identity verification is incredibly simple for both businesses and consumers, and can be completed in just 3 quick steps:

Step 1: Biometric single sign-on

Using either a desktop or mobile device, businesses and consumers can log in in seconds using biometric data saved to their account. This means no usernames or passwords required.

Step 2: Swift ID verification

The business then ‘pings’ a request to the customers’ device, requesting access to specific information. Once the customer receives the request, they can either approve or deny access for the business. Once approved, the verification process takes just seconds. 

Step 3: Secure payments

If taking payments, the business can then offer the most popular payment methods for their customers to pay directly through the Nuggets app. This includes credit or debit cards and even cryptocurrency. 

It’s that simple.

 

Ready to step into the future of business? Learn more about how Nuggets and Latpay can help you to reduce risk, increase revenue and streamline customer verification here. 

BENEFITS-OF-A-SUBSCRIPTION-BASED-BUSINESS-MODEL

Benefits of a subscription-based business model

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Recurring billing methods are transforming traditional business models by offering customers a new way to acquire products and services. If you’re looking to boost revenue and streamline sales in the post-COVID climate, consider whether a subscription-based model might be right for your business. 

Benefits of a subscription model 

Minimise missed or late payments with regular customers 

With the ability to automate subscription billing, your business will benefit from greatly reduced missed or late payments. Just set up the recurring payment when the customer signs up and have confidence in that regular payment rolling in. 

Reduce admin costs with subscription billing automation

Spend less time and money chasing payments, creating invoices and completing other administrative tasks with simple payment automation. 

Maximise payment security

Top payment service providers like Latpay utilise tokenisation and comply with PCI DSS Level 1 requirements, meaning you and your customers can rest easy knowing that every payment is protected by industry-leading security. 

Enhance the customer experience  

Take the hassle out of regular, manual payments with a set-and-forget method that requires less time and effort from your customers. 

Attract more customers to your products or services  

Rather than requesting a large, one-off payment, subscription-based models can attract more customers to shop with you by offering a smaller, more manageable fee. This means immediate access to your products or services at a cost that seems more affordable to them. 

Encourage customer retention 

With a payment that’s set up at regular intervals, customers don’t have to make a conscious decision to continue doing business with you. This means they’re more likely to stay on board for longer periods of time. 

Boost your bottom line with predictable revenue

Traditional, one-off payment methods require that you continue reaching and converting new customers to ensure a steady stream of revenue. 

Recurring card payments or direct debits, on the other hand, provide predictable revenue that you can count on. This, in turn, makes it easier to forecast and allows you to acquire only as much stock as you need.

 

Why customers love subscriptions:

  • Gain immediate access to their favourite products and services
  • Minimise the risk of penalty fees for late or forgotten payments
  • Have consistent access to products or services without completing manual top-ups

 

Subscription-based models are great for:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software products have been historically expensive, requiring a large, one-off payment for lifetime use of a particular product. Nowadays, many software companies have adopted the SaaS subscription-billing model to make products more accessible to their customers and to ensure continued use over a longer period of time. 

Health and fitness

Consumers, in general, are becoming increasingly health-conscious. With this in mind, many health and fitness brands are now offering monthly subscriptions to ensure consistent access to their latest and greatest wellness products. From vitamins and supplements to health foods and even gym gear, subscription business models are booming within the health and fitness space.

Food & meal plans

People lead busy lives, and that isn’t changing. To help overcome the challenges of a busy lifestyle, many food businesses are now offering a regular delivery using subscriptions. This includes everything from regular groceries to weekly meals and food plans to make planning and cooking meals simple.

Clothing & fashion 

Fashion is another industry that has begun adopting subscription-based models. People love receiving new goods in the mail and retail subscriptions have allowed them to do this on a regular basis without having to trawl through online stores. 

Subscription billing with Latpay

At Latpay, we work with businesses of all shapes and sizes to help them transform their operation and enhance the way they interact with their customers. Whether you’re operating business-to-business or direct to consumer, our subscription billing facilities and batch payments allow for greater automation and control of regular purchases and payments. 

Get in touch to learn more about the power of set-and-forget payments through Latpay.

Benefits of using tokenisation for payment security

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Tokenisation is the process of generating a random string of values (known as a unique ID number or token) to substitute sensitive data like payment details. 

Using tokenisation, businesses can offer a smooth and secure method of taking payments that allows increased protection against payment fraud. 

So how does it work? In essence, cardholder data is stored in a secure token vault that can only be accessed by the payment provider; consumer data is tokenised immediately upon making payment so their actual card data never passes through payment systems. 

What’s the difference between tokenisation and encryption?

When talking about tokenisation, many people think of encryption. However, tokenisation offers significantly greater security than encryption, quickly becoming the industry-leading method of securing data for payment processing. Here are some of the key differences: 

Encryption:

  • Mathematically generates cipher text using an algorithm and key
  • Format preservation means lower security strength
  • Encrypted data leaves the organisation

Tokenisation:

  • Randomly generates a value for plain text
  • Format maintained without any loss of security
  • Encrypted data remains within the organisation, allowing heightened security

Benefits of using tokenisation for payment security

Reduced impact of a potential data breach

While we hope it won’t happen, data breaches are all too common in businesses and industries across the board. You don’t have to be a large corporation to become a target, either. In fact, SME’s are often recognised for their inferior systems security, making them a primary target for hackers. 

Using tokenisation, however, sensitive data like credit card numbers aren’t accessible during a  breach. This is due to the fact that data is stored as tokens, and are therefore unusable to anyone but your organisation. So while tokenisation may not be able to protect your business against a breach, the financial impact will be significantly reduced by using tokenisation for data security. 

 

Protect your reputation and build trust

As a business, your reputation is arguably your most valuable asset, one that can take years to build yet an instant to destroy. To ensure your reputation remains intact, building and maintaining trust among your customers is absolutely critical.

Particularly for online businesses, customers need to have significant trust in your ability to protect their data in order to feel comfortable making a purchase.  

Tokenisation helps businesses to build and maintain this trust by demonstrating a dedication to data security. As the most impenetrable method of protecting payment data, consumers feel confident that their card details are safe and your business maintains a reputation of putting customers first.

 

Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

To ensure security of cardholder data, any business accepting, processing, or storing card details must be compliant with PCI-DSS regulations. 

There are 12 levels of PCI-DSS requirements depending on various factors of your business – primarily, how many annual transactions you process. Regardless of your requirements, striving for the highest level of compliance is always recommended and tokenisation is a great way to achieve this. 

Of course, tokenisation doesn’t guarantee compliance. However, partnering with a PCI-compliant payment service provider to offer tokenisation means you’ll also benefit from other secure services that help you to meet your compliance obligations.

 

Offer industry-leading security with tokenisation

Tokenisation is undoubtedly the most advanced way of securing cardholder data for payment processing. If the security of your customers is paramount to your business, learn more about implementing tokenisation with a PCI DSS Level 1 certified provider like Latpay.