Although it’s still early days yet a recent survey in the US has found that more and more US households are beginning to pay their accounts online instead of writing a cheque.

Is there some advantage there that you can see for your small business? Would you get earlier payments if your clients had the convenience of paying online?

There are plenty of options for accepting payments other than by cheque. Here in Australia banks will accept the payment online and credit it direct to your account under a system known as BPay.

There is also direct deposit straight into your account where the client has your bank account number and simply goes to their online banking site and authorizes the transfer of the money to your account. We pay several of our writers with that method.

The of course there’s the possibility of having your own merchant account and running a secure section of your website where clients can make a payment using their credit card.

There are probably other options too and some of them might work for your small business. Of course there are drawbacks as well and cost is one of them but if you analyze the costs of accepting payment by cheque as opposed to one of the other methods you might be surprised.

Of course whether it is going to work for you or not is something that only you can decide but, as Toni often says, it’s just a thought.