• Credit cards were introduced into the UK in 1967 with the launch of Barclaycard and the permission from the Bank of England to allow extended credit.
• By 1988 38% of the UK population had a credit card and 6% of consumer spending was made using them.
• The explosion of online transactions has brought with it a continuing increase in credit card usage.
• By the end of 2017 78.4% of retail sales in the UK were made by card.   This number increases all the time.

Taking payment by credit card – both online and in person – is a requirement of doing business.

However, these days, this can often be an administrative headache.  From time spent on the phone with a customer taking payment over the phone through to trying to find what a payment taken was actually for - this whole process can be very inefficient.

Integrating the whole payment process –both online and in person – with your DMS can vastly improve this process, for both the dealer and the customer.  

The ability for example for the Service Advisor to email a service invoice with a “pay now” button which takes the payment and then marks the invoice as paid in the DMS makes life so much easier for both customer and the advisor.

By linking the DMS with an online merchant account, this should be a one button press for the advisor and the customer happily will process the payment and effectively directly post the payment back into the DMS – removing the hassle from the advisor.

Similarly, for an on-site payment, linking your credit card terminals to the DMS means that a payment is linked to the invoice – which makes reconciliation of the payments simple.    It’s easier for the advisor or sales executive as well, as the amount requested matches the invoice value and the payment is automatically transferred to the DMS to mark the invoice as paid without any further interaction.

Overall, this is another great way of improving customer service, but meeting expectations and also reducing the administrative overhead at the same time!  

Another win-win scenario!