Tips to Securely Accept Phone Payments

Accepting credit card payments over the phone is a necessity for your practice to compete, however there are a few things that you need to consider when doing so. By accepting credit card payments over the phone, you could be taking the risk that the person on the other end of the line is not an authorized user of the card. After all, you can’t check photo ID as you could, for example, when taking payment in person. You won’t have the added benefit of using chip-enabled security technologies over the phone either.

You should also note that when you process credit card payments with information taken over the phone the processing company will treat it as a ‘card not present’ transaction. You can expect to pay slightly more in processing fees for these types of transactions. When compared to the benefits you’ll receive by accepting phone payments, such as speedier collection of receivables, the higher transaction rates are negligible.

Even with these additional considerations, taking phone payments is something you need to do for your business. To help protect yourself in the event of possible card fraud while taking phone payments there are some steps you can take to reduce the risk to your business.

Making Your Phone Payment Processing More Secure

Here are some tips on how to most effectively secure your phone order payments process:

• Invest in a very secure POS system with the latest security technology in place.
• Choose a payments processor and a hardware vendor that are both reputable and highly experienced in the dental or healthcare industry.

It’s also a good idea to require the following pieces of information for every single card payment you accept over the phone:

• Complete card number
• Expiration date
• Security code / CVV code
• Billing ZIP code

Although not a necessary step, your staff could also note in the Dentrix Ledger which payments were taken over the phone. This step might provide helpful information in the future if you were ever required to provide details of the payment.

For more information about Dentrix Pay, our latest Dentrix-integrated payment processing solutions click here.