在Covid-19进入美国的几周内，Itika Oldwine的生活发生了变化。Oldwine位于洛杉矶的公司Oldvine Florals曾在备受瞩目的婚礼，红地毯活动和企业产品推出中赢得了著名的花店的声誉。这些预订几乎在一夜之间干燥。“活动约占我们收入的84％，”奥尔德温说。“老实说，这是对系统的震惊。”
像许多公司一样，在Covid-19之后，Oldvine Florals被迫迅速改变其方法。Oldwine与个别客户旋转，为母亲节礼物而不是电影首映提供定制的花卉安排。Oldwine将自己的营销背景借鉴了陆地媒体的出现，并创建了电子邮件爆炸以吸引新客户。她的计划奏效了。在几周内，客户将排队以进行礼物交付甚至花卉布置订阅。她说：“我们现在很忙。”“我们真的在用油脂做饭。”
The turnaround has meant Oldwine has had to tap into a network of skilled freelance floral designers and delivery experts to keep her orders running on time. And, since much of Oldvine Florals’ business is online, digital payments from customers help buoy the company’s cash flow. “It’s definitely been helpful for people to pay directly with cards,” Oldwine says. “Those payments show up right away, and that lets me pay my freelancers and drivers consistently, which is really important these days.”
Digital payments have become increasingly important tools for any small business, and even more so since the onset of the pandemic. Many companies had to completely rethink their strategies for delivering their products or services and managing payments. “If you’re a local bakery, most days you think about whether you have the right flour and the right sugar,” says Kevin Phalen, global head, Visa Business Solutions. “Once COVID-19 hit, they also had to pivot into this new way of engaging with their customers in a digital environment, because safety became so important.”
THE CONSUMER APPROACH
COVID-19 caused a seismic disruption for small businesses. Take a local restaurant that didn’t have much of a digital presence before the pandemic hit: it suddenly needed a robust website that let customers choose what to order, allowed them to pay online, and helped coordinate the pickup in a safe and secure way. “All of a sudden they had to figure out how to do curbside pickup and delivery and how to take contactless payments, because people didn’t want to use cash,” Phalen says.
小型企业有很多工作要做，而且很少有时间来确保他们保持客户和收入的投入。他们看到了他们努力立即付出的机会：转向在线付款的转换可以帮助简化现金流，甚至降低可能出现不良支票或其他欺诈性付款的风险。帕伦说：“这使他们操作变得容易一些。”“现在，他们将钱传递给他们，以使他们更加控制。”
随着消费者交易数字化的数字化，许多小型企业还借此机会将他们的方法转移到向供应商和其他企业对企业合作伙伴那里汇款和收取资金的方法。毕竟，Covid-19关闭了许多工作场所，使编写，收集和存放支票更加困难。这导致公司朝着应付账款和应收账款的数字付款迈进的公司提升。
In fact, Phalen says he’s seen a migration of small businesses toward digital payment solutions enabled by签证直接，Visa的实时*推动付款平台。企业可以通过其金融机构直接使用签证，向供应商和工人提供快速的数字付款。Visa Direct还可以帮助企业快速获得资金（无论是从客户还是企业合作伙伴那里），将他们助理现金流以支付自己的运营成本。他说：“这确实可以帮助小型企业管理其AP和AR需求。”“他们可以更快地向工人付款，并对管理给供应商的付款有更多控制权。”
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Digital payments also are making it easier for businesses of all sizes to pay international vendors, which previously involved currency exchange and cross-border payment issues, along with delays associated with sending and receiving payments. Now, innovative solutions can expedite these international transactions to keep a company’s supply chain running smoothly.签证B2B Connect, for example, aims to make these transactions happen quickly, by facilitating high-value payments directly between participating originating and receiving banks, within one to two days. “We wanted to address how we could make those payments occur faster so that we can accelerate the movement of the goods and services in a secure manner,” Phalen says. “That’s what we’ve built and delivered to our clients around the globe.”
在针对小型企业的充满挑战的环境中，Visa的创新可以帮助Itika Oldwine这样的企业主适应并适应新的现实，从而使她不必担心如何管理现金流。现在，Oldwine专注于发展业务，利用她从Ifundwomen平台上获得的Visa获得的赠款，该平台提供了资金帮助和商业指导。她说：“我想学习如何探索从潜在投资者那里获取种子资金的其他方式。”“我正在利用教练经验来帮助筹集更多资金并扩大我的业务。”
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*实际基金可用性因接收金融机构，接收帐户类型，地区以及交易是国内还是跨境而有所不同。