Processing payouts manually can quickly become a distraction for high-growth online merchants. Find out how payout solutions help e-commerce businesses, and when to consider investing in one.
Financial management is an essential aspect of any business – especially when it comes to e-commerce. One of the key elements is processing payouts, including payments to vendors, customers, and employees.
Some online merchants choose to process payouts manually. For a small startup this may work in the beginning – but as business grows, so does the accounting admin. Before many merchants know it, they’re spending valuable time staying on top of outgoing payments that should be spent bringing in new customers.
Fortunately there’s an alternative to this approach that is gaining traction among high-growth online businesses. Tech-driven payout solutions enable companies to easily process payments, delivering a great experience to all stakeholders – while keeping freeing up more time for online merchants to focus on growing their business.
Just as all companies should understand the importance of implementing the right global payment solution for handling incoming revenue on the demand side of the business, payouts are equally important for the supply side.
This article explores the importance of payout solutions for high-growth businesses, and takes a closer look at who typically uses payouts as well as who can benefit from there.
Keep on reading for a detailed overview of payouts – or follow along with six video snippets (in Spanish with English subtitles) narrated by Laura Gomez, PayU’s Head of Global Payouts.
What are payouts in e-commerce? Definition and examples
How businesses use payout solutions
Why is a good payout solution important for businesses?
What to expect from a payout solution?
Which businesses need payouts? 5 critical use cases
Summary: Why online merchants should consider a payout solution
Payouts are payments made by a business to various stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, and contractors. Most companies make payouts either in cash or use various other methods available in their country.
For example, a company may use one of the following techniques:
A good payout solution allows merchants to cover the entire range of payout-related use cases such as:
Almost every business faces interruptions while making payments to its vendors or customers. A significant delay in payouts may lead to customer drop-off and interrupted service. A merchant can have multiple payout methods, not only those related to bank accounts. This is especially in countries in which the percentage of people who use banking services is low. Having alternatives to payout in other mechanisms such as cash or wallets is important.
Also, moving funds across borders may be riddled with challenges related to time, cost, and regulatory restrictions. A good payout solution should solve this.
Some common issues connected to payout systems include:
By equipping their business with a solid payouts solution, merchants can address these issues and ensure timely payouts for their key stakeholders.
What kind of features should merchants expect to find a high-quality payouts solution? Here are a few key functionalities to help you pick the right tool for the job:
As e-commerce is global by nature and business needs are always evolving, a good payout solution should also be flexible, with the capability to cover diverse needs, use cases, and industries. Some examples might include:
Gig economy merchants mainly disburse through bank accounts and require payout methods that allow for paying suppliers instantly.
A good payout solution should allow gig economy businesses to disburse money locally and, ideally, should also come with cross-border payments functionality.
The real-time nature of payouts is another important goal that merchants can achieve through automation. An API-based payout solution (such as that offered by PayU) helps to automate the internal payout process, so businesses can pay without operational burden, delivering a great customer experience.
Businesses in the crypto space typically use ACH bank transfers for local disbursement and SWIFT or wire transfers for anything cross-border. Therefore, an inability to process payouts instantly creates an immediate risk due to exchange rate fluctuation and high operational volumes. Lack of automation with banks can lead to higher costs as well.
A crypto exchange needs a 24/7, real-time payouts solution to pay investors faster and avoid exchange risk.
This is again where an API helps a lot by automating the payout process and reducing the operational burden for the merchant.
In a marketplace business, a payouts solution helps merchants scale in different countries and be cost-efficient by paying local-to-local and cross-border-to-local faster.
Merchants need detailed payout information to split the payment between the marketplace and the seller. They usually aim to pay sellers in real-time with well-known payout methods in the local currency.
A modern API payout solution is again useful when it comes to helping marketplaces easily scale their operations in different markets. This should allow them to issue payouts locally in different countries and currencies without any integration burden.
MLM merchants often disburse funds locally through bank portals. Traditionally, this comes with an operational burden and takes more time for the third party to receive the payout.
Merchants in the MLM space could therefore also benefit from a real-time payout solution – as well as a more efficient and automated process to pay dealers faster and ease their operational burden.
E-commerce merchants offering alternative payment methods (APMs) and card payments to their customers need to refund money easily. But the process from most card issuers is often slow and delivers a poor experience to payers. Furthermore, when paying through some alternative payment methods (APMs), a refund option is not possible.
To solve this issue, retailers and payment providers need a real-time payout solution that enables refunds and also allows merchants to process payouts in new markets easily.
Payouts are the backbone of smooth business operations. With advanced payment technologies available, merchants can easily simplify and automate payouts to drive greater business results.
Building a quick and hassle-free payout management process with a global payment provider is the best thing merchants can do to ensure smooth payouts that always reach their recipients on time.
A high-quality, real-time payout solution is a must-have for every company looking to make payouts as cost-efficient and fast as possible – especially when the business is operating across borders. Modern payout solutions come with APIs that help to automate internal processes so that merchants can pay without operational burden.
Combined with outstanding customer support and integration, a quality payout platform helps businesses to achieve their goals, solve issues faster, and reach new heights.
Reach out to our team to learn more about PayU’s payout solutions – and how they can benefit your business.