The partnership aims to make the tools usually utilised by large companies accessible to SMEs, enabling them to access reliable technology originally developed for major market players.
By partnering with Aevi, LEGI.ONE LTD aims to offer SMEs a technology platform that increases the possibility of providing improved payment services, thus strengthening their market position and meeting their customers’ needs to a higher degree.
Initially, this cooperation will introduce solutions for cashless transactions via payment terminals. In the future, both companies plan to reach the ecommerce sector, allowing businesses to merge transactions across online and in-store channels.
Aevi intends to broaden access to more complex payment systems for the SME segment, encouraging smaller merchants to deliver a higher level of service.
According to research from Ernst and Young, 74% of SMEs had been negatively impacted by the pandemic, resulting in sharp declines in profit and revenue. This provides context for the difficulties SMEs are experiencing.
32% of SMEs face delays in payments from customers, impacting cash flow and the ability to operate, according to Pay.UK. These late payments impact small businesses, with 43% of SMEs in the EUR area having difficulty fulfilling financial commitments.
Other challenges experienced by SMEs globally include high costs and lengthy times associated with manual payment reconciliation, delayed payments or cancelled purchases from customers due to increased friction in the payment system and issues arranging cross-border payments, among other complications.
The majority of SMEs approach these challenges poorly, as one in 10 SMEs did not try to solve payment issues. These SMEs don’t know there are solutions available, are not prioritising looking for solutions, investigated solutions but found them too complex, or feel that changing their system is a big risk not worth taken.
Pay.UK's research suggests that enabling simple and already existing payment solutions to be adopted by SMEs is the right approach.
Ever since the pandemic, SMEs are prone to prefer digital payments and bank transfers rather than cheques or cash due to the reliability and security of digital methods and the convenience of bank transfers.
Additionally, SMEs tend to readily express their own preferences for payment methods more than they did in 2019, when they were taking a passive approach driven by customer preference, according to PSR's SMEs Payment Research.
For more information about Aevi, please check out their detailed profile in our dedicated, industry-specific Company Database.
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