As a dental practice, you spend a lot of money every year on credit card processing fees. While these fees are a part of doing business and accepting as many payment methods as possible to increase convenience, they can often be lowered to increase your profit and decrease your merchant services spending. Here are some of the ways that you can get started.
Negotiating Rates and Fees
One of the most obvious ways to reduce your merchant services spending is lowering your processing rates and fees. ERJ Solutions can take a look at what you are paying now and develop a variety of ways to lower current fees without needing to sacrifice the versatility of accepting credit, debit, and ACH transactions.
Additionally, many practices don’t realize that different types of credit cards come with different fees attached. If you accept one VISA card, you must accept all VISA cards, but corporate cards and rewards cards have higher fees. Once you identify these issues, you can work with ERJ Solutions to negotiate lower rates for higher-fee cards.
Using Level II Data
With our transactions, we add level two data. This data is already on the credit card, and we populate it as we send the transaction through. Including level two data can lower the rate that your practice is paying, which will also decrease your merchant services spending.
Settle Transactions Quickly
If you want to get the lowest interchange rate possible, you need to close transactions within a set period of time (normally less than 24 hours). The faster that you are able to complete transactions at your dental practice, the lower your merchant services spending will be. When you have transactions that linger for 24 hours or more, they will typically be subjected to an elevated rate. If you have transactions that sit for 36 hours or more, the rate will be even higher.
Incentivize Specific Payment Methods
Because different cards and types of transactions come with different associated processing fees, one way to lower your merchant services spending is to encourage your patients to use specific payment methods over others. For example, you could offer a discount for paying with debit instead of credit or cash instead of a card.
APEX Reimbursement Specialists Is Here to Help Your Practice Grow
Whether you’re preparing for the recredentialing process or looking to explore automating your dental practice, APEX Reimbursement Specialists is here to help. Contact our team today by calling (410) 710-6005. We look forward to working with you to make your practice a more profitable place.