When you envision business growth, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Do you see user engagement statistics or envision your rising rank in search engine results? It’s perfectly natural to think of growth in terms of numbers and data.

However, there is a much quieter, more discreet metric that can give more insight into your business growth than you might imagine. It’s rarely analyzed in marketing meetings, but it plays a key role in the success (or failure) of your business. That metric is your payment stability, and it’s quickly becoming the new growth strategy for high-revenue online brands.

Growth-Impacting Consequences of Payment Failures

When payments fail due to an unstable payment processor, it’s not just an inconvenience for customers. It can translate to business stagnation or decline as customers become frustrated and decide to shop with your competitors. Additionally, business owners and teams feel the pain as brand trust erodes, support tickets increase, and team morale drops.

Consistent payment failures can lead to decreased trust in corporate leadership and can make it almost impossible for you to reach your growth goals. Fortunately, increasing payment stability can help restore confidence and help businesses increase their revenue. Choosing the right small business credit card processing partner is one of the most important steps you can take toward reaching your business growth goals.

What Is Payment Stability?

Payment stability refers to the ability of your business to handle transactions without failures, unexpected delays, or interruptions. The more stable your payment processing system is, the more smoothly customer transactions go, and the higher your customer satisfaction rate tends to be.

Payment stability involves giving customers access to a payment system that’s secure, reliable, and predictable, even during times of high traffic. If you have a stable payment processing system, you can rely on it to perform reliably during peak demand as well as on the slowest days.

Benefits of Payment Stability

Speed used to be the name of the game when it came to payment processing. However, high-revenue online brands now realize that payment stability is far more important than speed alone. Instead of searching for “instant approval” payment processing services that often come with higher transaction rates and risks, businesses are looking for more stable providers.

Underwritten, scalable credit card processors are quietly reliable and consistent. They’re designed to meet your business scaling needs and can handle increasing volume seamlessly. This stability helps reduce churn and spark user trust. Here are some of the most notable benefits payment stability can offer your online brand:

Increased Conversions

No business can grow effectively unless they come up with a way to increase conversions. A website conversion happens when a visiting customer completes a desired action (typically making a purchase). If any part of the purchasing process becomes cumbersome or irritating, customers will abandon their carts and your conversion rate will drop.

Achieving a stable and reliable payment process is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rate. It ensures a fast checkout experience and gives customers peace of mind that their transactions are secure. When your payment gateway is designed to optimize transaction success rate, you’ve achieved greater payment stability.

Reduced Involuntary Churn

The term “involuntary churn” refers to the unintentional loss of customers due to operational issues (most commonly related to the payment process). If your payment processor is cumbersome or frequently experiences payment failures, you’ll experience a higher involuntary churn rate. This can be disastrous to business growth.

Working with a reliable payment processor that offers payment stability is one of the most effective ways to reduce involuntary churn. Customers are less likely to abandon their carts when their payments go through without any issues.

Higher Payment Authorization Rates

Sometimes, payments get declined due to formatting errors passed between the merchant and the payment gateway. When this happens, it can result in an erroneous decline caused by incomplete or false data. These types of issues can lead to customer discontent and decreased sales.

Fortunately, a stable payment processing system is less likely to decline customers based on incomplete or erroneous data. Therefore, payment authorization and customer satisfaction rates tend to be higher.

Enhanced Customer Loyalty

Secure, seamless, and consistent transactions lead to improved customer satisfaction and trust in your brand. When customers know they can rely on you to provide a hassle-free and reliable payment process, they’re more likely to return to you for future purchases.

Customer loyalty is one of the most important goals businesses should aim to achieve if they want to meet their growth goals. Loyal customers tend to share their experiences with their friends, family, and community members. Their word-of-mouth recommendations become a powerful source of free marketing that can help your business grow faster.

Partner With a Stable Payment Processor

The payment processor you use can have a huge impact on your ability to keep customers happy, reduce involuntary churn, and meet your growth goals. If your current provider has a high decline rate or frequently experiences technical issues and glitches, it may be time to look for a new one. Once you’re able to offer your customers greater payment stability, it will be easier to earn repeat business, increase your revenue, and experience healthy growth.