If you’re eager to learn about the small business landscape amid the 2019-nCOV, then these stats from Card Flight Inc. will help get you up to speed.
Figures from its Small Business Impact Report shows transactions for small and medium businesses plummeted through March as shoppers continue to keep distance and opt for ecommerce deliveries.
CardFlight investigated 60,000 micro-businesses, and part of the report indicates that “sales went down for the 3rd week in a row, in March.”
Sales for Mar 23 – 29 (week 3) dipped nearly 12 percent week-after-week, and approximately 27 percent between Mar 2 and 8 (week 1)—before the national stay-at-home orders.
The tech provider mined this data from its SwipeSimple platform that offers services to merchants across 50 US states.
The count of transactions was down, as well, with nearly half the volume, for Week 4 compared to Week 1 of March.
Hospitality Sectors are the Worst Hit
Findings from the report also indicate that more sectors are taking more heat than others. Sales for hospitality-related businesses—restaurants and beverage stores— dropped by nearly 37 percent.
This percentage represents the sum of sales recorded by service providers or vendors and retail businesses.
A Change in Payment Methods
Shoppers also changed how they made payments. EMV payments reduced 47 percent in the final week, put side by side with week 1 findings.
Also on the plunge are magnetic-stripe transactions which fell 64 percent and lastly, contactless payments which were down 55 percent.
On the flipside, invoicing seems to be the only approach that saw a desirable result, even recording a 10 percent increase in week 4 of March.
More Insights from Other Studies
A different researcher, Signifyd, also disclosed that CNP payments (or online retail transactions done in the absence of a card) went up 9% in week 4 of March.
Signifyd is a cybercrime security company based in California. According to its findings, online retail sales for the whole of March went up 19%.
Other clues show customers are now buying more in online stores (than physical locations), in many product and service segments.
According to the Cybersecurity firm, items that were high in demand in the early stages of COVID-19 are no longer selling as before.
For example, Groceries, which recorded a 110% growth in sales somewhere in the middle of March, plunged 25% in the final week. The same happened for other products like tissue paper.
Key Takeaways
The key takeaways from the above reports are;
- Customers are keeping distance
- E-commerce sales are on the up and,
- Sales are down in brick-and-mortar small businesses.
These insights should serve as a guiding light for your business. And if you choose to take your business online, try an instant approval merchant account from First American Merchant.