Banks need to do more work to help their small business customers understand the efficiency of electronic payments and the differences between the growing number of choices in the market, according to a senior industry consultant.RFi Group managing director of consulting, Lance Blockley, said small businesses were the last bastions of cash and cheque payments.He said this was driven, in part, by tax avoidance but more importantly SMEs don't allocate costs to cash handling in their business planning. Speaking at RFi's SME banking conference in Sydney yesterday, Blockley said banks had to do more to guide their SME customers through the electronic payments and digital wallet maze."This is a business decision they grapple with. When we asked SMEs if they had ever lost a customer because they would not accept a payment type, one-third said yes," he said. "Seventy-six per cent said they did something to correct the problem."The problem they have is that choice is growing. They have to know what is popular with their customers and what is convenient for their customers. They need to understand the security issues."Payment systems have to be reliable and ideally they should integrate with the business's loyalty program."They may want to use something that differentiates them, like Beat the Q." Blockley said PayPal was still the dominant online payment provider because of its aura of strong security and ease of use but its weakness was that its merchant fees were high.