33% of respondents say late payments affect their ability to meet financial obligations on time, 17% feel late payments have a negative impact on staff upkeep including salaries, expense reimbursement and recruitment and 10% note access to finance is limited for business requirements such as equipment, product development, and research, a survey issued by YouGov, a market research firm, and ACI Worldwide, a payment system company, reports.
95% of SMEs believe real-time payments would be useful to them. 29% of respondents highlight faster payments as the most crucial banking service to business success in the current economic environment. 67% of businesses prefer bank transfer as a method of payment from customers. Bank transfer is supported by Faster Payments, the UK banking service that reduces payment times between banks and customer accounts.
Faster Payments service has been made available to 52 million current account holders in the UK, offered by ten major banks and building societies and over 400 other financial institutions. However, 24% of SMEs are not aware of the initiative and its benefits.
SMEs say that mobile and internet banking (64%) have had the most positive impact on their business, according to the survey. However, the majority of SMEs feel that many of the new products offered, such as alternative financing (86%), P2P payments (89%), biometric recognition (91%) and contactless (86%), have had minimal effect on their business so far.
For more information about ACI Worldwide, please check out a detailed profile of this company in our dedicated, industry-specific online company database.
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