Sage Pay's ‘Pay Now' service from Sage, the market leader for integrated accounting, payroll, and payment service, is gaining traction in South Africa as Small & Medium Businesses seek to address one of their major headaches: the impact of slow payment of their invoices on their cash flow.

The solution directly addresses the widespread challenges smaller businesses face in receiving timely payment from their customers. Sage has found that 60% of companies have to wait 60 days for invoices to be paid and nearly half (47%) say that some invoices take even 90 days.

"Late and irregular payments often force these business owners to look at short term loans and invoice factoring, which has a direct impact on their profit margins and the sustainability of their business. Our Pay Now service helps to address the challenge by ensuring that clients have no excuse not to pay their bills on time," says Charles Pittaway, Managing Director of Sage Pay.

With Pay Now, Small & Medium Businesses have the ability to present any of the following payment options to customers on paper or electronic invoices: Bank and Instant EFT, 3D secure credit card payments and payments at select retail outlets including Checkers, Checkers Hyper, OK, Shoprite, USave, House & Home, and the SA Post Office. Payment at stores can be done by presenting a unique barcode that appears on the invoice to one of 4 000 available outlets.

Pay Now is already integrated into specific versions of Sage Accounting software, allowing businesses to issue invoices or statements with multiple payment options. Invoices and statements can be presented in the Customer Zone (a value-add for all Sage Partner/Express Advantage customers), or can be emailed or posted. An additional benefit is that these payments are automatically receipted and reconciled in the accounting software which prevents data capture errors and saves time.

Sage's Pastel Accounting division is one example of an organisation streamlining its cash flow by using Pay Now. The company sends out 10,000 invoices per month, offering customers a range of ways to pay using the Pay Now service. All the invoices go to Sage Pastel Accounting customers, and show them in a tangible way how Sage Pay's Pay Now service could help their businesses.

"Our integrated accounting, payroll & HR and payments systems are changing the way that millions of businesses track the movement of money through their business," says Anton Van Heerden, EVP and Managing Director, Sage South and Southern Africa. "We have taken payment technologies that were once only accessible to large companies and made them affordable to smaller businesses."