What are Payment Links and How Do They Work For Healthcare Providers?
What Are Payment Links?
Payment links are a powerful and easily to deploy business tool that healthcare providers can use to quickly and securely accept payments remotely from patients by simply sharing with them a pre-populated, personalized web link. Because they are pre-populated, patients spend less time entering information and can complete a payment quickly and efficiently.
Payment links are delivered directly to the patients’ mobile phone or via email, thus reducing the time and effort involved of having to log-in to a web portal, making things simple for both healthcare providers and patients alike.
How Do Payment Links Work?
Once they have subscribed to a Payment Link service, the healthcare provider creates and sends a personalized payment link by entering basic information into a web portal which includes:
- The Patients Name
- A patient identifier, such as a patient account number, an invoice #, statement #, etc. (The healthcare provider can choose how they wish to identify the transaction).
- The amount to pay
- The Patient’s contact details (which can be an email or mobile #, or both).
At the click of a button the personalized payment link is sent to the patient. The patient immediately receives a personalized link where s/he can pay now
. All they have to do then is verify the information and make the payment using their credit card.
Both you and your patient then receive immediate payment confirmation that the payment has been completed.
Because payment links are a distant payment technology, healthcare providers do not handle any credit card information either in person or over the phone, which assists healthcare providers with maintaining PCI compliance.
How Can Payment Links Be Used?
Healthcare providers can easily collect remote payments for Telemedicine appointments, in advance of procedures or even as a means of reminding patients of an outstanding balance.
For example, this how a healthcare provider can utilize payment links during a procedure scheduling call:
- A patient calls their healthcare provide to book a procedure.
- While the healthcare provider and patient are on the phone the healthcare provider sends the patient a payment link to either via email or/and TXT Message
- The payment link is pre-coded with the patient account information and amount
- The patient receives the message, clicks on the link, enters their credit card information and the payment is complete
- The healthcare provider receives instant notification of payment and the appointment is booked.
All of the above takes place while the patient and healthcare provider are on the phone.
Payment Links can be exceptionally useful in today’s environment where both healthcare providers and patients are minimizing face-to-face contact as part of measures that have been undertaken in light of the global pandemic. They enable you to continue to manage the task of collecting patient fees efficiently and without compromising payment security or any social distancing mandates.
Learn More About Datatel’s Payment Links