Credit Card Acceptance Expands My Customer Base

As the President and CEO of Metro Productions in Raleigh, North Carolina, I have seen first-hand the positive impacts that accepting credit and debit card payments can have on a business.

Metro Productions is a design firm that helps clients tell their stories about their products and services. We help clients get their message across through a variety of media—including websites, videos, direct mail and print collateral. Our clients range from small community businesses to large corporations, and our projects run the gamut from simple printing jobs to major marketing campaigns.

Accepting credit card payments has been a major boon for our business. While some of our largest customers are happy to pay by check, we serve many clients who are small businesses with uncertain short-term cash flow. By accepting electronic payments, we give these businesses the ability to procure our services without having to pay upfront. Instead, they can pay back their credit card companies at a more convenient time when they have the cash. If we did not accept credit cards, we would lose much of our revenues from small businesses. These clients would simply go to another design firm that did accept plastic.

At Metro Productions, we also serve some customers who make printing orders for personal, rather than business, use. I’ve noticed that in recent years, more and more of these customers pay by card instead of by cash or check. I believe that this demonstrates a growing trend of people simply preferring to pay by card. Businesses that do not accept electronic payments will continue to fall further behind the curve, losing out to businesses that do.

Of course, there are other reasons why we accept card payments as well: they’re safe and secure, we’re guaranteed payment, and there’s no need to ever worry about a bounced check. But for me, customer preference is the strongest reason of all. As business owners, our number one priority is to make our customers happy. We succeed when we do, and we fail when we don’t. Customers increasingly prefer to pay by card, and there can be no better reason to accept them than that!