As a platform tailored to meet the needs of businesses, boost productivity and help business owners keep track of transactions, inventories, etc., the Quickteller Business platform abides by the simple rule of fintech companies in relation to businesses: make life easy. In this interview, the Head, Sales – SMEs & Merchant Acquiring, Interswitch, Jeffrey Williams-Edem, speaks about the role of Quickteller Business as a payment collection platform for businesses of all sizes. Oluchi Chibuzor presents the excerpts:
What is the Quickteller Business app?
The Quickteller Business is beyond an app. It is a payment platform specifically designed to ensure an efficient payment collection for businesses and merchants of various scopes, providing them access to an assortment of integrated payment offerings, from disbursements to value financing. To break it down, the Quickteller Business app serves as a hassle-free digital payment platform for businesses of all sizes, including large corporates, small businesses and socialpreneurs, managing their payment collection while allowing them to focus on the business side of things.
In terms of productivity, does the Quickteller Business app have any impact on the productivity levels of SMEs?
In respect to the productivity level of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the goal is to be more efficient in the way they sell their business, the way they make decisions, and the way they keep records. The Quickteller Business app has been developed to allow any SME instantly collect payment, whether physically or remotely. Not only card-based payments, but people who don’t have cards can use a Quick Response (QR) code. The QR code can be generated on the app and shared socially or presented to the person to scan with their bank app.
Those without a smartphone can dial the USSD string to make payments instantly. These available options make the payment experience for their customer faster, easier, and efficient. Also, every user has an interactive dashboard that displays information such as who paid, what they paid for and how much they paid. To emphasize the importance of record keeping, the Quickteller Business app allows you to generate an invoice. Being able to generate an invoice means that you can keep a proper record of your business, enabling you to go back and see all the sales generated and status of all the placed orders; whether paid, pending payment, or delivered, all within the app.
How can SMEs plug into the QTB platform without a website?
The Quickteller Business platform was designed to allow for an easy onboarding of its users. All a user needs to do is to register by providing the necessary details to setup their account, which allows the user to perform actions like add inventory, remove inventory, add a picture, and generate a product link and share with somebody, who in turn will copy the link, click it, and make payment. We’ve made it so easy for SMEs to track payment records, digital stores, and see reports broken down to different parts of their businesses and enabling the business to run efficiently. SMEs can manage their digital and physical shop all from one device and that is the focus of what the platform is trying to achieve, by making the SMEs more available, informed, and positioned to do selling.
What are potential Quickteller Business users assured of?
Businesses are assured of four key things: they are assured of a quick receipt of payment when a transaction is received digitally. The second assurance is the bouquet of options available to receive payments. Card acceptance will not be the only option, as there are multiple ways to collect money to avoid the matter of customer debt. Businesses are also assured of receiving transaction information like reports and data, and also assured of the security that is built around that solution.
Does the Quickteller Business platform come with a feature that ensures the safety of the data of businesses?
The Quickteller Business app is a product of Interswitch – which has been in the payment industry for over 20 years. The certifications we have globally ensure that all transactions are end-to-end encrypted using the PCIDSS certification standard. With this, the QR code generated on the platform is encrypted in such a way that it includes the vendor’s bank account, what the customer is trying to pay for, and the amount. Immediately it is scanned, the banking app will show you the name of the business you’re transacting with, the bank account, what you’re paying for, and how much; all encrypted into the USSD and the QR code, a further assurance of the level of security.
Speaking of data security, what features of the Quickteller Business platform can small business owners leverage to maximise the use of its services?
When designing the Quickteller Business app, we took into consideration the various pain points of small businesses, and the data we’ve gathered shows that 75 percent of the people who visit the platform are Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The platform is created to satisfy the peculiar needs of these businesses, making every feature of the platform useful and easily leveraged for an optimal performance of these businesses that are micro-transaction based.
So, if a business is into trading, dry-cleaning, or pastries; they can immediately create a storefront, upload pictures, and share the generated link with people on social media on the go, which exposes their business automatically to hundreds of thousands of people at no cost. Also, we have created simpler transaction options like USSD, QR code, pay with transfer that are the basic ways these MSMEs receive money today, and more so, we have also made transaction fees competitive for them such that they only incur costs when payment is made. We provide business insights that allow them to be more informed about their business so that they are able to make better decisions as MSMEs.
What can Quickteller Business users expect in the coming years?
Users can expect timely updates that aim to address issues peculiar to their businesses, as more and more business transactions are conducted on the platform. They can also expect a loyalty reward programme through the loyalty integration scheme that can be activated to reward loyal customers, within the control of the user. This loyalty initiative can be supported by sponsors and can be turned on, turned off and adjusted based on the different environment and behavioral tendencies observed in consumers, which will encourage brand loyalty, repeat business, and increase in market size.
We will also introduce a fraud management solution, which is going to be available to everybody for free; meaning that you can control what kind of transactions you want to accept to curb fraudulent activities. This provides a window into what is going on around the user’s interface and further enhance the security profile of the business. Other services to look out for include escrow that serves as an intermediary channel between customers and businesses, guaranteeing satisfaction from both parties in every transaction, and split settlement that allows customers get payment settled into multiple accounts. For example, businesses can remit taxes after every transaction without waiting until the end of the month, making bank accounting easier.
What distinguishes QTB from the others?
The Quickteller Business platform is intuitive, robust and secure. Quickteller Business is an innovation and improvement of an already effective platform making it a more tested platform. The platform is built using world-standard fraud management solutions that help mitigate fraudulent transactions. The Quickteller Business platform exposes its users to a ready market of over 5 million potential customers. The platform gives its users total control over its business, collection and every other thing in between.
