Contactless transactions are gaining popularity in many industries since the COVID-19 Pandemic. With tap-and-go technology widely accepted and used by consumers. Many industries such as Retail, Hospitality, and Healthcare are discouraging customers from using cash. They have decided only to take contactless payment to reduce the potential for COVID-19 transmission from contaminated objects. The push towards contactless has also encouraged the greater use of wearables and tap-and-go credit cards.
The growth in contactless payments has resulted in a better customer experience since post-pandemic. The entire healthcare industry, patients and visitors, had to follow the new norm of maintaining social distancing requirements. These include physical barriers to keep people apart and in-center limits that restricted the number of people they could serve at any one time.
Contactless has allowed businesses such as cafés, restaurants, retails, and services firm to streamline their business processes by allocating specific opening hours, a limited number of customers, and completing payment quickly. It has given consumers confidence that they aren’t at risk within those environments and ensure hospitals and Healthcare can remain viable when they cannot serve regular patrons.
Covid-19 Pandemic has introduced late adopters to get benefitted from the use of digital wallets and cashless payments. Once these consumers understand the benefits and start using a cashless payment method, they are unlikely to return. Therefore, hospitals and healthcare centres need to prepare for this trend and accept payments from any source and geographic location. CloudBanking Healthcare Payment service is certified as PCI DSS compliant. Ask our friendly support team to know how you can improve the digital experience for the healthcare industry and leverage the power of payment.
Why Does the Healthcare Industry Need to Consider Cashless Payment?
Healthcare providers and hospitals have started to prioritise digital communicational tools, such as telehealth. Coronavirus has forced Healthcare into a digital world. Online forms, scan QR codes, and contactless solutions are the new normal for addressing patients’ clinical questions and information. Similarly, adopting contactless billing and payment options will help patients follow the new norm of “maintaining physical distancing”. It will help them safely and engaged while allowing your administrative and medical team to run a safe healthcare organisation. The Healthcare system will then resume more effectively and rebuild a strong relationship of trust with their patients. Thus, contactless payments are a simple tool to fix the gap in providing an effective system for patients and providers.
Benefits of Contactless Payment for Healthcare Bill
Contactless payments, such as tap-and-go, contactless EMV cards, credit cards, direct debit, mobile Pay, and more, were popular before COVID-19. However, post-pandemic, they seemed to be an essential tool for the healthcare system. Both patients and the healthcare system prefer shifting the new norm of contactless payments with shared devices, like physical terminals that can easily accept Europay, Mastercard, and Visa or EMV technology. It’s a win-win situation for both patients and health organisations. The rise of telehealth and the challenges to maintain physical distancing shows the need for a new model. The new innovative model has helped to keep patients, staff, and healthcare finances healthy and operative to move forward.
Here are some benefit of contactless payment in the healthcare industry:
1. Improves Patient Experience
Healthcare has struggled to adapt customer-friendly technology to improve the patient experience. When consumers have different options to communicate with business personal, patients in the healthcare system have to rely on legacy channels to communicate with health staff, including doctors, nurses, or admin staff.
However, due to innovative digital payment technology, medical bills are sent by mail, and patients can easily make payments over the phone or web-based user. The Pandemic is fulfilling technology changes that the system had awaited for several years. Patients can easily view and pay their bills via any preferred options. It has helped the consumer to feel secure over their finances and provide a better experience. Moreover, when patients receive digital invoices, they are more likely to make the payment instantly, so they accept it much faster.
It also reduces the burden on your health system’s Regulatory Compliance Mark team and makes them more productive to support patients with complex inquiries. When you removed dependency on manual billing, your team will get the opportunity to become more efficient and improve patients’ experience.
2. Reduces Security and Health Risk
Contactless payment like mobile payment or web-user payment eliminates the issues associated with more manual payment and billing methods. From the patient’s perspective, these technologies have led to an economical way of paying bills, supported by the contactless payment method. From the hospital team and healthcare staffs’ perspective, contactless eliminates the security and contamination risk. When the admin staff needs to process patients’ payments, they had to ask for credit card information over the phone. It allows for human error and creates PCI risk.
It even raises the risk of security of their payment information while sharing it over the phone. Meanwhile, when patients come in for the office visit to make payment, they will be touching the POS terminal that others have used and might not follow the physical distancing. Thus, the traditional approach of collecting payments increases challenges for your admin team. However, with digital payment, your patients get secure peace of mind as their information is encrypted. It reduces the PCI scope of your system’s reliance on hardware devices.
3. Syncs with Many Significant Emerging Trends
The trend of interacting with the health system across each step changes, including how they pay for care. Patients can now interact digitally with doctors on video calls. It includes how they receive the invoices from their health system. For instant, patients do not have to wait for their paper invoices to arrive via traditional mail. They can accept any billing communication on their electronic device and make payment with a tap via their device.
Patients want online and user-friendly payment options with valuable functionalities such as viewing payment statements and store card details. As they continue to interact with intuitive technologies, the need for technology advancement continues to increase.
4. Instant Reports
With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, health and safety concerns, business owners raised a question on how to conduct business and accept payments during stay-at-home mandates and social distancing. Seemingly overnight, we saw online ordering, touch-free digital payment methods, curbside pickup, and no-contact deliveries become ubiquitous with daily life. CloudBanking has crunched the numbers of transactions made at thousands of businesses across the globe. With our all-in-one reporting tool, we provide a single or consolidate view of your healthcare business performance. It saves your customer information and provides transaction history, contact details, and other info with one click. It helps you to help you analyse their behaviour efficiently and offers online, real-time reporting for quick information and communication exchange. Moreover, the payment is digital are easily stored and instantly reviewed. Therefore, you do not have to spend more time counting physical fiats for auditing.
Conclusion
Sooner rather than later, contactless payments, AR automation, and integrated payments will be regular in Healthcare. The advantages are apparent. Contactless payments improve patient safety, the customer experience, and credit card security. AR automation can reduce administrative costs, free up time for accounting staff, and offload costly manual work. Finally, integrated healthcare payment may introduce both contactless payments and AR automation into the practice management platforms that healthcare providers already know and trust.
Providers should choose their fintech partners with care. In terms of technology costs and ease of implementation, a practice management platform with integrated payments is usually the best option. Still, it’s possible to connect contactless payments and AR automation into your existing stack. Either way, your patients want a digital experience and will seek care from providers who offer it. It’s time to meet their expectations.
Visit CloudBanking now and send an inquiry for payment benefit for Healthcare.
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