Challenge

ServiceM8 is known among its customers – “tradies” (skilled tradespeople in Australia) – for continuously improving its product. They trust ServiceM8 to track the latest technology, leaving them free to focus on the many challenges of running a field service business. Payments are a key part of the equation, so from the beginning, ServiceM8 has aimed to make it as easy as possible for tradies to get paid.

The company first partnered with Stripe in 2014, using Stripe Connect to embed payments in the ServiceM8 app. This was a big step forward for ServiceM8, which could now give tradies a mobile solution that covered their whole workflow – from the first call through to scheduling, quoting, invoicing, and taking payment on-site – all from the palm of their hand. At launch, tradies were able to manually enter a client’s card information in the ServiceM8 iOS app.

“The payments landscape was pretty different then,” says Darren Ford, ServiceM8’s product manager. “We didn’t offer any in-person payments, and then Stripe came out with this really well-designed, developer-first solution that enabled us to give our customers a really great experience.”

ServiceM8 also accepted traditional online payments, allowing clients to pay after they received an invoice. Later, they rolled out Stripe Payment Links, enabling tradies to generate QR codes that clients could scan for contactless payment – an especially powerful benefit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stripe Billing also enabled tradies to schedule recurring automatic payments for regular services such as lawn or pool care, improving their cash flow and reducing the need to follow up with clients who forgot to pay.

Even with these advances in place, ServiceM8 wanted to keep improving the payments experience for tradies and their clients. “We’re still fighting this outdated convention that a trade contractor or service business will do work on-site, then leave in good faith, and wait days or weeks to get paid,” says Ford. “Plus, people don’t like giving up their money. The faster and more streamlined you can make payment, and the closer you can get it to the completion of the work, the happier they are to pay.”

In its next phase, ServiceM8 wanted to more fully enable on-site contactless payments, reducing the need for tradies and customers to ever manually input client credit card information.

Solution

ServiceM8’s strong preference is to build with best-in-class partners it knows it can trust, and the company looked to Stripe for a next-generation payment option. Tap to Pay on iPhone, a contactless payment acceptance solution that’s easy to integrate using Stripe Terminal, is “the final piece of our payments puzzle,” says Ford.

With Tap to Pay on iPhone, tradies can now accept all types of in-person, contactless payments right on their iPhone – from physical debit and credit cards, to Apple Pay and other digital wallets – with no extra hardware needed.

“It’s so much more intuitive,” says Ford. “It’s just a great solution.”

Stripe’s integration process for Tap to Pay on iPhone is streamlined and simple. Built into the Stripe Terminal SDK, Tap to Pay on iPhone requires just a few steps for integration. As a result, ServiceM8 was able to focus its attention on user experience, creating a clear and simple flow for tradies who adopt Tap to Pay on iPhone. Once the app was enabled with Tap to Pay on iPhone, users could start accepting contactless payments right away.

Results

Quick adoption among ServiceM8 customers

Less than a year after ServiceM8 launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in Australia and the US, the feature now accounts for more than 30% of in-person payments accepted by ServiceM8 users. “That’s really quick adoption – we usually expect the early adopters to take it up on Day 1, with a slow ramp up from there,” says Ford. “Our customers are typically so busy that they don’t necessarily look at new features right away.”

One business used Tap to Pay on iPhone via ServiceM8 over 800 times in a 30-day period – meaning the business accepted a contactless payment at 800 individual job sites in just a month.

Improved cash flow for ServiceM8 customers

ServiceM8’s integration of Tap to Pay on iPhone “allows us to take payment in the field, which saves a lot of time compared to sending invoices out to clients; we can just receive the money right there, which helps our cash flow,” says Jeff Wilson, who owns Phōs, an electrical, lighting, and audio/video company in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ultimately, Tap to Pay on iPhone allows tradies to focus on what they do best: providing the services their clients rely on.

Increased adoption of ServiceM8’s payment service

The addition of Tap to Pay on iPhone increased customer adoption of card payments with ServiceM8 and Stripe by 78% year over year. Before the integration, tradies could only activate payments in the office, on their computer – it was buried in their account settings. Now, thanks to the Tap to Pay on iPhone integration, they can create and connect a Stripe account right in the ServiceM8 iOS app – and start accepting in-person, contactless payments in minutes.

“We knew people would like Tap to Pay on iPhone – there were no downsides,” says Ford. “Who could better benefit from taking payments on-site? They basically made this for tradies, and Stripe was fast to support it.”

Expansion of access

Following the success of ServiceM8’s rollout of Tap to Pay on iPhone in the US and Australia, the company launched the feature in the UK.