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Many of the changes that businesses had to make over the last couple years to stay afloat were sudden and dramatic. But shifting to digital payments was not.
Accepting Interac e-Transfer® as a form of payment has actually made things easier for many users and their customers – and many found that they prefer it, including Rachel Adjei of the Abibiman Project.
“It’s just very easy,” says Rachel Adjei of using Interac e-Transfer in her business. “It’s easy for book-keeping purposes, it’s easy for the customer and it’s easy for me.”
Ms. Adjei owns and runs the Abibiman Project, an African food business that sells various spice blends, teas and coffees, chocolates and prepared meals as well as offering catering and pop-up dinners.
Businesses like Ms. Adjei’s are part of the reason that earlier this year, the payment service hit a milestone: one billion Interac e-Transfer transactions were conducted over a 12 month period. In April of 2022, almost one-fifth of Interac e-Transfer transactions involved a business, accounting for 33 per cent of all dollars sent using the service that month.
The Interac e-Transfer service has proved so popular with businesses and customers alike that it’s outlasted the COVID -19 pandemic measures that propelled its use in the first place.
“A recent Interac survey shows us that almost half of Interac e-Transfer users have leveraged the service to pay a small business, demonstrating its integral value in an increasingly digital world,” says Anurag Kar, AVP of money movement at Interac. “And this has been propelled by businesses.”
Interac noticed how many businesses were using the Interac e-Transfer service on a regular basis, so last year it introduced Interac e-Transfer for Business. “We worked to enhance Interac e-Transfer in a variety of ways, including addressing challenges businesses face around speed, operational efficiencies, data and higher limits,” says Mr. Kar.
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“Many business owners appreciate the ease and convenience of the service when it comes to such things as payroll without cheques, sales without cash and bookkeeping without paper invoices.”
Ms. Adjei also appreciates the slightly less impersonal aspect of using Interac e-Transfer. “It feels a little less cold compared to ‘Give me your card information, I’m taking your money, here’s your product, now go away,’” she says with a laugh. It also means she gets customers’ contact information and can use it to stay in touch with them and update them on products and events – with their consent, of course.
As well as taking payments this way, Ms. Adjei pays a number of her suppliers via Interac e-Transfer and notes that she generally finds other businesses to be completely open to this form of payment. “It’s really easy – they have me on file, so I initiate the Interac e-Transfer process and I get my product,” she says.
Ms. Adjei also uses the Interac e-Transfer service to donate a portion of her profits each month to Afri-Can FoodBasket, a local non-profit that supports the Black community with access to culturally appropriate foods. “Giving back to the community is a core part of my business, and using Interac e-Transfer makes it easy and safe,” she says. “I know they’ll get it, and I know that I have it on record.”
Another major selling point of the Interac e-Transfer service is that there’s no need to account for an interchange fee – which means Adjei receives the full payments from the sales of her wares and Afri-Can FoodBasket receives the full amount of her donations each month. When you’re running a small business, this kind of detail can make a big difference.
For Ms. Adjei, being able to use tools like Interac e-Transfer helps her continue to grow her business – what she calls her “passion project.”
“This is all very new to me, so it’s nice that there are services out there that make it easier to navigate,” she says. “I get to tell stories through food based on traditional recipes and the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ connected to them. It’s about more than just filling your belly – it’s about filling your soul and feeling that ancestral connection to the motherland.”
Interac and Interac e-Transfer are trademarks of Interac Corp.
Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Interac. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.