Touchless payments in your front office: Three reasons a smart terminal will ease your patient's minds.

Since the pandemic began to rage in the spring of 2020, stress levels and safety concerns have been at an all-time high. Nowhere has this been more true than in the healthcare industry. Fortunately, technology in the form of the smart terminal and the contactless card reader have helped conscientious practices create the best possible business environment while providing top-level care to their valued customers.

What are smart terminals and contactless card readers?

Gone forever are the days of paying for medical care or products with cash. For the most part, patients are now using credit and debit cards when the time comes to settle their bills.

The smart terminal takes the traditional, stationary card reader multiple leaps into the future by doing much more than just facilitating fast and easy payments. In addition, it possesses a suite of auxiliary features that can integrate into your back-office operations to make running your practice easier than ever. 

• Database functions that enable quick lookup of past billing details and purchases.
• Inventory management capabilities that will help you to know when to reorder and prevent over- or under-buying.
• Simplified customer management that can remind customers of upcoming appointments or alert you when payments are late.
• Employee management tools that can help you to create and maintain accurate staff schedules.
• The ability to integrate with accounting and other systems to streamline bookkeeping.

The power of your smart terminal can be further augmented if it includes a touchless card reader. This external device allows for fast and easy contactless payments through the use of near-field communication (NFC) technology. This technology interfaces with similar capabilities in a customer’s smart credit card or mobile device. Within seconds of the patient bringing their phone or wearable device two inches or less from your reader, all of the relevant payment information can be securely masked from hackers, authenticated, and verified for fast and secure payment processing.

How accepting touchless payments on a smart terminal will relieve patient fears.

Now that you understand what smart terminals and contactless payments are, it’s time to recognize how they can enhance your healthcare business while putting your patients’ qualms at ease.

1. Increased hygiene. Since there is never any physical contact between customer cards or devices and your touchless reader, personal health can be maintained.

2. Faster checkout. Contactless payments on your smart terminal can be accomplished more quickly, usually within just a few seconds. As a result, lines are reduced and distancing protocols can be maintained without difficulty.

3. Security is not sacrificed. Despite the effortless nature and speed of the transactions, data security is not compromised in the least. For each transaction, a single-use, random series of numbers called a token is created that identifies the data as it travels. Hackers are unable to benefit from this encrypted and tokenized information.

Thanks to your updated smart terminal and state-of-the-art payments acceptance technology, you can allay patient fears as you run your health-related business in a way that is smoother and more streamlined than ever before. Don’t wait another day to bring your practice into the 21st century with a modern and feature-packed smart terminal.