Mobile payments, which streamline processes and improve customer experiences, can benefit any field service business. But small and medium-sized (SMB) field service companies may experience the most significant impact from mobile payments — sometimes using them to stay in the black.
Consider these five reasons you need to integrate payments with your field service clients’ mobile applications and give them relief from the manual, paper-based processes that are eating into their profits.
Why SMB Field Service Businesses Need Mobile Payments
- Less paperwork: When a field service tech can accept payment on-site with a mobile device, there’s no need to return to the office to prepare and send a paper bill. The tech can update the account from a tablet or handheld computer on-site. Moving from paper-based billing to mobile payments may also enable the business to reallocate staff to focus on revenue-producing tasks.
- Customer convenience: Mobile payments integrated with field service applications give customers the ability to pay with their credit cards and immediately receive digital receipts for their records. Convenient, efficient service of this nature can help build customer loyalty. It also shows customers that although they’re dealing with an SMB, the service they receive is just as professional — and high-tech — as service from a larger company.
- Signature capture: When a field service tech is on-site at a business, a mobile payment solution allows them to capture the signature of the person authorizing the payment. If questions arise, the signature can easily be provided to the customer for confirmation that the technician completed the work.
- Faster fund transfer: Invoicing and waiting for payment take time. According to a Honeywell white paper, it takes between four and 22 days for a business to receive payment on an invoice. Mobile payments enable field service companies to collect payment faster. Cash flow can be crucial for SMBs with limited capital when it’s time to pay staff or purchase materials for the next project. It’s possible that this lag is holding back business growth.
- Fewer delinquent accounts: When a technician can accept payments on the spot, the company may be able to reduce the time and costs currently associated with collections.
Field Service Mobile Payments Use Cases
There are myriad use cases for field service mobile payments that can benefit consumers as well as the SMB business. For example:
- Eliminating healthcare billing confusion: Patients receiving healthcare often have to sort through multiple bills. Home health or therapy patients who can take care of their bills or copays at the time of service can prevent confusion later.
- Tokenized data on file: Some field service companies provide periodic service, such as landscapers who work on-site in the spring, throughout the summer, and in the fall. Mobile payment technology that uses tokenization can securely store payment data to use for each transaction.
- Preauthorization: Occasionally, a field service technician encounters a situation in which the scope of work must change. Integrated mobile payments can enable the technician to preauthorize payment for the added costs.
Give Your SMB Field Service Clients the Edge They Need
Mobile payments integrated with the SMB field service applications can improve efficiency, lower costs, allow the company to provide better customer service. It also gives your clients total visibility into their businesses, so they can keep a close watch on projects, expenses, and revenues.
Mobile payments allow field service businesses to do what they do best, and not focus on billing and collections. By integrating payments with the mobile applications you develop for your field service clients, you can give them this advantage. 
