Saving on Payments in the Practice – Mistakes to Avoid and Tips to Lower Your Cost (On-Demand)-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.

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