Retailer cashes in on payments over the internet

While Brits may be happy buying over the internet, not all of them want to - or are able to - pay online.

For baby products retailer Kiddicare, cash is one answer and company is rolling out new functionality which will allow it to accept cash payments from its customers for internet purchases within the next few weeks.

Scott Weavers-Wright, partner at Kiddicare, told silicon.com that the move was prompted by the economic downturn. "It's very apt that we should be able to offer the ability for customers to pay with cash in the current climate. If [customers] don't want a credit card they shouldn't be penalised and they should have the option for another payment," he said.

"We get about 400 or 500 calls a day and 300 or 400 emails a day we do get questions on 'is there an alternative payment?' and it's definitely increasing," he added.

Kiddicare will use a system from Paysafecard for the cash payments: customers will be able to purchase a voucher number in cash from one of the 20,000 outlets with a PayPoint sign, such as petrol stations and cornershops, and then enter the number when checking out on the Kiddicare website to pay for their purchase.

The cash payment will be integrated with Kiddicare's IBM WebSphere system.

"That's been interesting because we are an IBM WebSphere platform - IBM WebSphere is a big tool, a big product, and quite complex." Weavers-Wright said the company has three IBM developers in house full-time and the project had taken six weeks with one developer on it full time.