Saving on Payments in the Practice – Mistakes to Avoid and Tips to Lower Your Cost-Webinar Recording

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The webinar introduced BestCard and featured Bill Nitto explaining credit card processing for dental practices. He emphasized that the session was informational, not sales-focused, and aimed to help offices reduce payment costs and improve patient experience.<br /><br />Bill outlined three major mistakes dental offices make: trusting quoted rates without checking hidden fees, failing to ask enough questions about contracts and termination terms, and accepting “free” card readers that usually lead to higher long-term costs. He explained how processing fees work, including interchange, assessments, and processor profit margins, and noted that the average dental office pays much more than it should.<br /><br />He recommended calculating an office’s effective rate by dividing total fees by total card sales, with a goal near or below 2%. He compared pricing models, favoring Interchange Plus as the most transparent and often the cheapest. He also discussed surcharging, flat-rate, and tiered pricing, warning about regulatory risks and patient dissatisfaction.<br /><br />Finally, he shared practical cost-saving tips: process payments while the patient is present, require ZIP code and security code for keyed-in payments, encourage debit and HSA/FSA cards, avoid insurance virtual cards when possible, void transactions instead of refunding, and stay PCI compliant to avoid unnecessary fees.

Keywords

dental practices

credit card processing

BestCard

processing fees

interchange plus

effective rate

PCI compliance

surcharging