Medical Merchant Processing: Benefits of ACH for ISOs, ISVs, and Merchants

Remember writing a check at the doctor’s office check out?Going to the doctor or hospital,  patients watched payment processing evolve from the good old paper check, the preferred medical merchant processing payment method of satisfying healthcare bills for a good part of the previous decade. When the offices allowed patients to use credit cards to cover their expenses those transactions quickly gained popularity as an integral part of medical processing systems, grabbing some of the fame away from checks.

Come 2020, the pandemic put people behind the four walls of their house, hindering them from going to see their doctor, much less go in to send in a payment for previous debt they made with those facilities.

People’s preference for contactless payments surges, forcing medical businesses such as clinics, hospitals, laboratories, and others to quickly adapt to the new norm if they wanted to stay in business. The variety of facilities needed to change the medical merchant processing to accept payments via mobile, email invoicing, and through an online hosted payment portal on the healthcares’ website.

1. A plan needed to develop quickly so patients could pay their medical payment with invoices with cutting edge processing methods. Otherwise, the medical office ran the risk of hampering their customer satisfaction metrics.

Time to Make an Organizational Change in Medical Processing

A good portion of medical offices has yet to find a provider that accepts eChecks. If your clients in the medical industry lack the capability of accepting ACH payments, they’ll likely fall behind competitors who do accept them. This is why it’s imperative to provide ACH payment processing capabilities to medical merchants.

Benefits of ACH Payments for Medical Payment Processing

Healthcare businesses can derive a wide array of benefits by accepting ACH payments. Following are a few benefits of ACH payments:

1. They are relatively economical: You’re probably familiar with processing fees that accompany credit and debit card payments. ACH payments cost significantly less than these payment methods, and even paper checks if you factor in the time and labor expenses.
2. There is a lower probability of fraud: Paper check frauds are common because they can be tampered with. When a customer puts the check in transmission via email, there are several ways they can be compromised. ACH payments eliminate this risk because they can’t be lost in the mail. They provide a sense of security to your client’s customers.
3. They make receiving recurring payments easy: Periodic billing and costs of processing recurring transactions can affect the bottom line. Moreover, customers sometimes forget to make a payment on time, adding to the merchant’s cash flow perils. Setting up recurring ACH payments can eliminate these issues and also save time spent on regularly billing the customers through the medical office’s merchant processing account.
4. The processing is much shorter: 21^st-century businesses can’t run on paper checks that take days to clear. Medical payment processing solutions require ACH capabilities as a quicker alternative to expedite the receipt of funds.
5. They save time and reduce the possibility of errors: Physical checks necessitate frequent trips to the bank. ACH payments do not require bank visits and therefore allow merchants to spend time on other productive tasks. Additionally, ACH payments are less prone to errors as compared to physical checks. Especially with NACHA’s new rule for WEB debits going into effect, the errors will reduce further.
6. They offer convenience: Let’s face it—nobody likes walking around with a checkbook or mailing physical checks when they can just make the payment with a few clicks. ACH payments are convenient not only for the customers but for merchants as well. Merchants don’t have to visit the bank or fret high about processing times with ACH payments.

ACH payments can bring these efficiencies to your client’s payment process. If you’re curious about how you can fully leverage the power of ACH payments.

Take a look at 6 Strategies to Optimize Your ACH and Merchant Services Account.

Why You Should Consider Partnering with ICG

It’s possible that your client uses a separate provider for IVR and credit card payments, and a QuickBooks plugin for email invoicing. Accepting and managing payments via separate providers can make the process tedious.

ICG offers a payment gateway for merchants to accept and manage payments via multiple methods

Integration with ICG will enable your clients to accept payments via IVR, credit cards, debit cards, ACH, remote deposit capture, eChecks—all in one virtual terminal. This saves your clients time and makes management easy by bringing all these payment methods on a single platform.

Partnering with ICG also reduces PCI scope for your clients

Instead of having a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) come for an on-site assessment that costs merchants plenty of man-hours and unexpected dents in the budget, you could help merchants reduce their PCI scope and let ICG take care of PCI compliance.

ICG is a Nacha Preferred Partner

Therefore, ICG always ensures compliance with Nacha regulations. Our commitment to brilliance, extensive industry experience, and 24/7 support make us an ideal partner for ISOs and ISVs.

ICG’s Payments Processing Solutions

Instead of creating in-house payment solutions, ISVs can integrate their product with our API offered as a hosted payment portal or an iFrame. ICG’s suite of payment processing solutions can introduce efficiencies for your clients’ medical payment processing system. Following are the ICG solutions that can synergize with your product and provide your clients with excellent medical payment processing solutions:

1. Virtual Terminal

ICG’s internet-enabled management system allows your clients to process ACH and credit card transactions from a secure web-based interface.

2. Invoice Management System

Request payments directly from iCheckGateway.com. Clients receive a payment link via email and can choose to pay by ACH or a credit card.

3. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

IVR allows customers to make ACH and credit card payments using their phone, without any interaction required with a representative.

4. QuickBooks Plugin

Your clients can now integrate ICG with both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. The plugin uses tokenization to support stored payment methods for autopay customer profiles, which consequently reduces your client’s PCI scope.

5. Cash Discount Program

Merchants lose about 2 to 4% of the sales value as credit card processing fees. A cash discount program could function as an incentive for customers to pay in cash or by ACH transfer. Customers can avail of this discount through ICG’s payment platforms, including on mobile and IVR systems.

We Strive to Nurture our ISO and ISV Partnerships

• ICG aims to add value through our sophisticated payment solutions,  strengthening your sales offerings. Understand as you meet with Healthcare providers and medical software applications, we will not compete with our ISO and ISV partners for merchant processing.

Our sales and support team will continue to provide support until such time that you begin to feel confident about taking over. We pride ourselves on the comprehensive support we provide during the merchants payments processing experience, futuristic thinking towards the technical challenges they face during the transition.

You will never have to worry about customer attrition with ICG. Our support and tech teams will ensure to resolve your merchants’ concerns quickly. Become an ICG partner today and provide cutting-edge payment solutions to your clients.