New app offers SMEs digital payment solution

Ellie Duncan
01 Jul 2021

A new QR-code payment and invoicing app, tomato pay, has been launched to provide small businesses and sole traders with a low-cost digital payment solution.

Tomato pay, which is a rebrand of Fractal Labs, will be free to download and free for consumers to use.

The new Open Banking app has no card minimum fees, or chargebacks and provides confirmation of all transactions for both customer and business.

The QR-code based app was launched following research by tomato pay that found payment options are a decisive factor for consumers when deciding where to shop.

The survey of 2,007 UK adults revealed that 35% said they now decide where they shop based on whether or not the business accepts non-cash payments and 20% would be put off from using a small business if they could only pay in cash.

Consumers are using cash less as a direct result of the pandemic, with 61% attributing this to hygiene fears associated with handling money, while 53% of cash-only businesses admit they’ve lost customers through not offering alternative payment options.

Nicholas Heller, tomato pay’s founder and CEO, said: “Our research shows that many small businesses can’t justify the costs of offering card payments, but also, that there is support for QR-code based payments which are far cheaper for small businesses to implement, with four in 10 people saying they’d find it easier to pay a small business using a QR code.”

Among the small businesses surveyed, 42% said it was difficult to justify the costs of offering contactless and half have concerns about security.

He added: “tomato pay is an app designed specifically to support small business owners and remove the headache of finances – starting by ensuring that more of a payment goes to the business and not their payment providers.”