All businesses, especially those in accounts receivable management (such as medical billing or debt collection) have experienced challenges collecting payments. However, there are tools available to help lessen the impact of loss due to these challenges.
Accounts receivable businesses and departments need to study these tools and consumer payment trends to assess whether they're using the best technology available to increase revenue and mitigate loss.
Encourage Prompt Payments with Self Serve Options
A big challenge is encouraging your consumers to make payments in a timely fashion. Consumers are less likely to pay on time if they run into obstacles when trying to pay. One of the main obstacles consumers encounter is not being able to self-serve or go online either via a computer or a mobile device and make a payment.
According to a recent study on mobile and online payments conducted by the Federal Reserve in 2014, more and more consumers are using online and mobile payments to pay their bills:
“Services that allow consumers to obtain financial account information and conduct transactions with their financial institution (mobile banking) and that allow consumers to make payments, transfer money, or pay for goods and services (mobile payments) have become increasingly prevalent…. Use of mobile payments has also increased. In 2011, 12 percent of mobile phone users and 23 percent of smartphone users reported using mobile payments. By 2014, usage of mobile payments had increased to 22 percent for mobile phone users and increased to 28 percent for smartphone users.”Federal Reserve Study
This payment trend will only continue to increase as more consumers move to mobile phones and smartphones.
Again from the Federal Reserve Study, “Focusing only on those smartphone owners who reported that they had made a mobile payment in the prior 12 months, the most common mobile payment activity was paying bills (68 percent), followed by making online or in-app purchases (54 percent).”
Free Hosted Online Payment Services Optimized for Mobile Devices
PDCflow offers a solution to this payment obstacle at no extra cost to you: a free, hosted, PCI Level 1 Compliant Online Payment Center. PDCflow’s online payment services are free for anyone using our credit card or ACH processing solutions.
Our online payment services are simple to set up and customize for your company.
It is secure and compliant. The online portal is easy for your customers to use, and optimized for mobile payments.
Your consumers can connect to your PDCflow online payment services 24/7 and make a payment. They can even set up recurring payments according to your customizable minimum payment requirements in two easy steps.
This equals less need for consumer interaction, allowing you and your staff to focus on other tasks. It also lessens the obstacles for your consumer to remit payment to you.
20-35% Increase in Payments on Average
In fact, based on the statistics on PDCflow clients who moved to offering online payments, these businesses saw an increase of payments anywhere from 20-35 percent. A large Midwest medical billing client even saw their incoming payments increase by 90 percent, from $580,000 to $1,100,000 monthly within their first two years with PDCflow and online payments.
Working Smarter, Not Harder
Another significant challenge in the accounts receivable industry is being able to accomplish more with less staff. The less time spent with each customer taking payments or trying to contact you for payment, the more time you have to focus on other business in your office.
With PDCflow's recurring payments system and online payment services, you empower your customers to easily make payments online and even set up recurring payments, anytime, anywhere reducing the number of staff required to focus on actually taking payments.
A third challenge accounts receivables companies are facing is reducing bad debt write-offs. Anytime a debt has to be written off is never a good thing. There can be many reasons a debt is chosen to be written off. Whatever the case may be, giving your consumers an avenue to quickly and easily make an online payment will reduce bad debt write-offs. The earlier the amounts owed are paid, the less chance they become uncollectible.
The PDCflow team has put together simple and low cost methods your business can implement today in order to collect more payments through an online payment center.
