Social Distancing Friendly Payment Processing

Contactless mobile payment usage is surging across the United States as people now view their phones as the safer way to pay due to COVID-19.

Consumers pay directly in mobile apps for services like Doordash for food delivery and Instacart for grocery delivery as well as transfer funds for person-to-person services using Venmo and Zelle. Even the New York City subway system is working to implement contactless payments at station turnstiles.

Your patients expect the same from your dental practice.

Patients want a way to pay for your services without having to present a credit card to your staff, touch a terminal, or open a paper billing statement. Embracing contactless payments at your practice is an easy way to make your patients feel safe while at your office and can help you collect more payments, faster.

In this article, you will learn how your dental practice can accept social distancing friendly payments and why forward-thinking practices are rapidly embracing Pay-By-Text for contactless mobile payment processing.

What is Pay-by-Text?

Send text. Patient clicks. Get paid.

It’s that easy.

With Pearly’s easy-to-use, cloud-based software, your dental practice team can send a payment request to a patient in 10-seconds. After entering the patient’s name, amount due, mobile phone number, and email, the patient receives a friendly, personalized text message with an invoice link that they can use pay safely on their mobile device.

If the patient’s credit card or ACH details are already in the Pearly Portal, they can simply reply with “OK” and will be billed automatically.

The patient can also click on the invoice link, review the details, and seamlessly enter their payment information into a mobile-friendly payment portal that is branded to your practice. The patient can make a payment for their dental care services before treatment, in the waiting room, or in the comfort of their own home.

The entire payment process is social distancing approved.

As soon as a payment is made, Pearly automatically processes the payment, alerts your team, and deposits the funds directly into your dental practice’s bank account. The Pearly Portal provides instant access to key metrics and invoice details for unpaid and paid Pay-by-Text requests.

Watch the video on how Pay-By-Text works.

Why Pay-by-Text?

Social Distancing Friendly Payments

With Pay-by-Text, patients do not need to touch a credit card terminal or hand their card to your dental practice staff. Your practice safely sends a payment request from the computer and the patient completes payment on their personal mobile phone.

With dental practices re-opening across the country, there are many new precautions and initiatives that are required for patient and staff safety. The manner in which your dental practice accepts payments is easy to forget given the many challenges the industry is facing.

Fortunately, implementing Pay-by-Text only takes a few minutes and your patients will thank you for providing a safe and more convenient way to pay for their dental care.

Collect More Payments, Faster

Your patients may not answer a collection call, open a mailed statement, or respond to an email, but they'll always read a text message. With open rates of 98% compared to 30% for email, text messaging is the most convenient and private channel for patients to pay.

By providing this preferred option to patients, they will pay your practice faster, leading to improved cash flow for your practice during this critical time.

Pay-By-Text is also a more cost-effective way to collect past-due balances. Mailing paper statements costs an average of $7.26 per statement and, if a $30 per hour practice staff member takes 20 minutes to make multiple calls to finally collect payment, that is another $10 out the door.

Sending a Pay-By-Text request takes seconds and your patients can complete payment in less time than it takes them to open their stamp drawer.

Offer Installment Options

Over 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic and your dental practices needs to be sensitive to the economic hardship of your patient base.

Offering the ability for patients to pay in Installments helps them spread out the cost of treatment in a way that works for your patients and your practice.

Installments is an optional feature you can provide to patients when collecting funds with our Pay-by-Text product. You can easily set the installment schedule and can choose whether or not you’d like to provide this option on a patient-by-patient basis.

When a patient clicks on the invoice link, they can opt to pay in full or pay in Installments according to the schedule your practice has provided. If a patient selects the Installment option, the first payment is collected and Pearly automatically charges the patient based according to the schedule via credit card or ACH.

After each Installment is paid, Pearly deposits the funds directly into your dental practice’s bank account. It's easy to update expired credit cards and see every payment in the Pearly Portal.

Learn more about Installments here.

Provide a Modern Patient Experience

In addition to providing patients with a safe way to pay, implementing Pay-By-Text elevates the patient experience. Stop bothering patients with collections calls and paper statements by engaging them on the channel they prefer: Text Messaging.

Pay-By-Text reduces friction between practices and patients. It is a win-win that saves your practice time and money while providing your dental patients with the most convenient and safe way to pay.

Next Steps

Getting started with Pay-By-Text is easy. You can start sending Pay-By-Text requests in minutes and the software is built to delight your dental practice staff.

Take a look at the overview video here or schedule a demo with a Pay-by-Text expert.