If you still exclusively rely on cash payments in your health and fitness business, you could be hurting your business’s potential growth, revenue and cash flow.

This is ultimately due to the physical, tangible nature of cash. Cash must be collected and deposited into your account before it can be used to pay your staff, grow your business, or improve your member experience. These processes take time and effort, ramping up costs.

Discover why offering your members more ways to pay can greatly improve your business’s growth potential and deliver a greater experience for your customers.

Is cash still king?

While the old saying ‘cash is king’ still holds in many situations, when it comes to collecting payments from your members, cash can hinder your business’s growth potential. Indeed, cash still makes up about 14% of the total POS payments in APAC, and 41% of the POS payments in the Philippines. (Statista, 2024)

That said, cash has its downsides too.

Cash is risky, cumbersome and requires additional operational processes and security measures (like a lock box, or safe and a trusted staff member to deposit the daily takings).

All this additional work strains your operations – one missed bank deposit, and you might not be able to pay your staff, suppliers or keep your members happy. While relying on cash payments might seem ‘easier’, this strategy might hurt your business’s cash flow and growth potential in the long run.

How does relying on cash hurt your cash flow and revenue?

1. Time and effort:

Cash payments require additional security protocols to ensure safe and efficient payment processing. These include lock boxes, the maintenance of a cash float for change, and a trusted team member to make deposits. All this time and resource management can slow down your business’s cash flow and growth goals.

2. Human error:

Undercharging or overcharging a member paying with cash can be a hassle, forcing your business to absorb the associated costs and manage refunds manually (while dealing with the inevitable complaints and friction). A few simple miscalculated payments can have a severe knock-on effect for health and fitness businesses, especially for small to medium sized businesses that need to foster a strong relationship with their members.

3. Turning away potential members:

While some of your members may like to (or insist on) paying with cash, many patrons might find cash off-putting or difficult to manage. Forcing your customers to withdraw cash to pay for their fees might encourage them to find a gym or studio where they can make payments using more convenient methods (like card, direct debit, or by using a digital wallet).

4. Collecting cash payments can’t be automatic:

Collecting cash payments requires manual human intervention and can’t be an entirely automatic process. To be truly autonomous, your business will need to ditch cash for a payment solution that allows for automatic money transfer (like card, direct debit or digital wallets).

5. Bookkeeping mistakes:

If you’re collecting cash payments in your business, chances are you are using pen and paper invoices or keeping tabs of payments using a spreadsheet or other document. While this process is fine for a small number of members, as your business grows, you’ll find that managing a spreadsheet becomes increasingly cumbersome as your business grows.

Making the switch to automated payments

If your business could benefit from a more automatic, streamlined approach to member payment collection, it’s time to consider a solution from one of Ezypay’s integrated software partners.

Ezypay supports payment solutions for every kind of health club, local gym, big box fitness facility, franchise, personal trainer, swim school, yoga and Pilates studio - especially in difficult to service APAC markets with a high barrier of entry, such as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand and Taiwan.