Small business owner? If you’re reading this, you probably are, since small businesses are our main thing here at Sareen and Associates.

Next question: Do you take mobile payments at your small business? If you don’t, you probably should. It’s probably time to move to mobile payments.

Here are a few reasons why you should think about mobile payments:

Right around 50% of the U.S. adult population is walking around right now with less than $20 cash in their pocket. And they do this every day. And hardly anyone carries around a checkbook with them anymore, just like hardly anyone uses the actual Yellow Pages (the hardbound book with real pages) to look up a business anymore.

Except your very elderly great-aunt Hazel, who you love very much, but she also wouldn’t use the remote for her new television the first eight months she had it because she thought it would catch her drapes on fire. She’s a little nervous about technology.

I digress, and will get back on the subject at hand.

Now, if most of your customers are young adults, or women, or people with less than $30,000 household income, that percentage of people walking around every day with less than $20 in their pocket is quite a bit higher than 50%.

Can you see how this could be limiting sales if you have, say, a food truck? Or a kiosk at the mall where you sell jewelry from South America? Or, a table at the local farmer’s market where you sell organic eggs every Sunday? Or, a booth at an antiques emporium? Sure you can – once people have their real-time spending cap raised, they usually spend more money.

Maybe those examples are too easy. How about this; how about if you have a field sales team, and instead of getting checks as payments or deposits for work to be done later, they were able to take a card payment right on the spot? No more bounced checks. And you’d have the money right away.

What if you had a tree-trimming service and while you were taking down the big dead elm tree they originally called you about, the homeowner walks out to your truck, and inquires how much additional it would be to trim those two oaks over the garage? And he asks if you can take a credit card?

Here’s another reason – your competitors are using mobile payments. Depending on which data set you want to use, anywhere from 40% to 50% of small businesses in the country take mobile payments now. If you’re in an affluent, educated metro area, like Los Angeles, Chicago, NYC, Miami or Washington, DC, well, that number is higher.

This reason is one that affects space and aesthetics – even if you only have one retail store and your salespeople never go outside of it, getting rid of a cash register frees up physical space, and, gives the interior space of your shop a sleeker, more modern look. Or, if you have an antique store, it preserves more of that period look. Art gallery? Same premise at work.

Last reason – small businesses that use mobile payment systems find that their accounting and inventory is a lot more accurate and up to date. And most mobile payment software “talks” to your small business bookkeeping system, whether it’s QuickBooks or Freshbooks, etc.

Providers: So many, and here are some names to get you started – please note that we have no relationship of any kind with any of these providers and are not getting compensated in any way for listing them here.

In no particular order:

ISIS Wallet – yes, an unfortunate name, considering recent developments in the Middle East

Amazon Local Register – I think you know the parent company

Square – The old-timer (since 2009)

PayPal Here – You’ve probably heard of PayPal

SparkPay – Capital One is behind this

Flint – relative newcomer with a strong offering

Bank of America Mobile Pay – pretty self-explanatory

Phone Swipe – owned by a company called North American Bancard (NAB)

And there are more all the time, including two 800-lb gorillas that just showed up very recently, and are ready to crush everything that gets in their way, including each other. Yes, Android Pay (from Google) and Apple Pay. This means war.

You certainly won’t lack for options, so if you haven’t considered mobile payments before, think about it now, and if you’ve thought about it before, but never got around to doing anything, maybe it’s time to revisit that option. Maybe you should move to mobile payments. Not offering mobile payment options to your customers may soon put you at a competitive disadvantage in your market.