While eCommerce businesses have boomed during the pandemic, this trend is part of a much larger picture. Years before, in 2017, Nasdaq published a report indicating that most purchases are set to happen via ecommerce channels by 2040. Over the next 30 years, around 95% of all shopping will shift online, making traditional retail increasingly irrelevant.
However, despite this shift, traditional banks can struggle to understand how digital entrepreneurs operate, while neobanks like Chime have been plagued by fraud issues. Since banks are a crucial part of any business’s operational infrastructure, eCommerce business owners need to recognise how their banking partner can play a vital role in their long-term success.
In fact, several specific banking features can significantly accelerate a company’s growth journey by allowing them to do the following:
Get funded without losing equity
One in four businesses reports being unable to access the funding required to see significant business growth. It can also be confusing to know which options are available to you as a business owner. Individual venture capital firms are bombarded with over a thousand proposals each year and are mainly interested in businesses seeking an investment of at least $250,000.
Even if you manage to land this type of funding, you often suffer expensive dilution. Perhaps this is why 89% of small business owners search out loans or lines of credit to grow, with business credit cards being the second choice, with almost a third of small business owners using credit cards as a means of investment capital.
However, this can be risky if repayment terms become overwhelming. Instead, you should not have to give away the equity of your company or overextend your credit capacity in order to grow. The ideal banking partner should help you to secure working capital for growth without losing ownership.
Get paid faster for every sale
“Cash is oxygen. You can make the greatest cup of coffee, the greatest sneaker, the greatest TV show, or the greatest work of art ever, but if you can’t sell your product you are out of business.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
This feature can be a game-changer for business growth as it means you can get paid faster from your online sales. It unlocks your sales revenue sitting in Amazon, PayPal, Stripe and more, so you can reinvest at a quicker pace. You can spend with confidence, knowing your cash is flowing and not being held by payment providers.
Conversely, when you are not paid quickly, you run the risk of cashflow issues, which represent the reason why 82% of small businesses fail, according to a recent study by U.S. Bank. While the majority of small businesses fold within their initial five years, problems with cashflow remain the key cause.
Save time paying suppliers by automating bills
“The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time.” — Mark Zuckerberg
Time is precious, and you can save more of it with automated bill payment and tracking tools. You can also avoid mistakes caused by manual entry. This type of tool means that you get notified, approve and track bill payments in real-time and be able to carry out transactions while you’re going about your day. To ensure you never miss a payment, you can also schedule bills for their due date.
This feature matters because missing payments lead to late fees, leading to unnecessary headaches and further problems. Even more importantly, it allows business owners to focus on the most important things they should be doing. The success of a business is typically linked to the focus that a business owner can give to strategic issues.
Instead of getting tied down by day-to-day issues and administrative tasks, the most successful entrepreneurs tend to invest their most unrewable resource – time – into focusing on longer-term priorities.
Uncapped offers online businesses fast, fair funding and powerful banking tools tailored for your specific ecommerce needs – including all of the above. We were launched by experienced founders who believe that you shouldn’t have to give away ownership of their company to fund growth. In short, we provide no-security and no-equity investments from $10,000 to $10 million to ecommerce companies so you can invest in the marketing, hiring and inventory you need to scale faster. We also provide tools finance without the headaches, as well as an Instant Revenue feature, and automated bill payment and tracking.