Veterinary Software Providers: Six ‘Must-Haves’ in a Payments Partner

Six ‘Must-Haves’ in a Payments Partner

A Guide for Veterinary Practice Management Software Providers – Special Edition

Introduction

As a veterinary practice management software provider, you have seen firsthand the many ways practices benefit from using your application.

From scheduling and recordkeeping, to marketing, wellness plans and billing solutions and everything in between, your solution plays an integral part in helping office staff modernize operations and run thriving, veterinary practices focused on providing quality care for the animals and owners they serve.

You also understand the key role your payments integration plays in delivering a feature-rich solution. In order to build and grow a thriving business, practice management ISVs need a true partnership with their payments provider—one that allows you to focus on your core business while your partner handles the payments detail.

Without this key alliance, you may find yourself dealing with product gaps and untapped revenue streams. To ensure you have the right partner for your needs, we recommend keeping these six key considerations in mind:

. Technology to optimize operations

. Ease of setup with frictionless onboarding

. Merchant pricing built for your customers

. A proven track record of sucess

. Flexibile partnership programs

. Service and support

Technology to optimize operations

Your goal is to make operations run smoothly for the practices you serve. Your payment partner’s goal should be to deliver the technology to make it happen. When ISVs have less than stellar payment solutions, operations can be cumbersome and inefficient for your customers.

The ideal payment provider will offer purpose-built solutions for veterinary practices that transform the way clinics operate and provide pet owners with exceptional payment experiences. Here are six essential payment technologies for veterinary practice management.

NEXT DAY FUNDING

Out-of-pocket expenses for the practices you serve can be quite extensive—from lab fees to equipment and medications to payroll. Find a payments partner that can offer your customers the ability to receive credit card funds as soon as the next business day.

CLOUD EMV FOR SAAS PROVIDERS

Offering contactless and traditional payment options that meet the demands of today’s environment is key. Devices that support EMV, contactless, swiped, and dipped transactions give practices the robust capabilities and security they need while making your solution market competitive.

CARD ACCOUNT UPDATER

From expiration, to theft, to loss, credit cards are replaced for a variety of reasons. When you offer card account updater, software users receive automatic updates to customers’ cards through your application to keep payments uninterrupted. Deliver a seamless billing experience and set your software apart from the competition.

MOBILE PAYMENTS

From the front office to the exam room to athome and onsite veterinary care, mobile payment solutions provide practices an opportunity to create exceptional commerce experiences. Mobile commerce solutions allow your users to manage operations and collect payments, anywhere at any time. Supporting mobile payment acceptance is simple with a mobile SDK.

HOSTED PAYMENTS

Pet owners, like any consumers, want to schedule services and make payments in ways that are most convenient for them. Help practices improve revenue cycles while enhancing the patient experience by delivering secure billing and payment solutions for websites and patient portals. A hosted payments solution makes it possible while removing software applications from PCI scope.

TOKENIZATION / TOKEN SHARING

Help practices increase recurring revenue and easily bill cards on file for completed or canceled appointments, wellness plans, and one-time future transactions with tokenization as part of your software solution. Practices can automate invoicing and collect payments without storing patient cardholder data locally. With token sharing, it’s easy to extend card-on-file and recurring billing across multiple locations from clinics to emergency hospitals without having to re-collect payment information.

With $40B processed annually, look to Nuvei’s deeply integrated payment solutions to drive superior commerce outcomes.

With ~75,000* veterinary practices in the United States, and the vet care market reaching $34.3** billion in 2021, the time is now to deliver a comprehensive solution that delivers exceptional commerce experiences.

*AVMA US Veterinarian Statistics 2020 **APPA 2021 Market Trends

Ease of setup with frictionless onboarding

Traditionally, establishing a merchant account for the first time, or simply switching merchant services providers, has been a tedious task for all businesses—practice management is no exception.

The process includes lengthy merchant applications, requirements for supporting business documentation, back-and-forth pricing negotiations, the list goes on...

The friction in this process causes countless practices to “stick it out” with inferior processing solutions that do not provide the purpose-built tools necessary for growth and profitability.

While practices suffer, as a software provider, delays in merchant account setup and poor customer adoption because of painful merchant onboarding processes result in failure to fully monetize a potential leading revenue stream—your payments program.

MONETIZE PAYMENTS BUILD YOUR BRAND

DRIVE EXCEPTIONAL EXPERIENCES

THE GOOD NEWS

Managed payment facilitation models have recently emerged and are creating new opportunities for leading software providers to flip the script.

Managed payment facilitation makes it possible to deliver a frictionless merchant onboarding experience and white label payment solution without the requirements to take on the burdens associated with traditional payment facilitation (such as card brand registration and bank sponsorship requirements, capital needs, and assumed risk and liability).

Veterinary software providers should look for a payments partner well-versed in managed payment facilitation.

By doing so, your customers can be upand-processing in near real-time—think minutes, not days—producing immediate residual income, and whether you are moving your merchant portfolio or adding payments to your application for the first time, the process is simple.

90% data elements

Deliver a risk-free streamlined customer onboarding experience and reduce the number of data elements required to board a merchant with managed payment facilitation.

Merchant pricing programs built for practice management

With increased operating costs and shrinking profit margins, every penny counts. And, because no two businesses are alike, merchant pricing should not be either.

Instead of offering one-size-fits-all pricing, the ideal payments partner should have flexible pricing structures in place.

Find a partner that can offer these options:

FLAT RATE

This simple, easy-to-understand rate structure is great for smaller practices that want to know exactly how much they will pay for payment processing. Each transaction is charged the same rate regardless of the card type accepted or how the card is processed.

TIERED

A tiered pricing structure bundles interchange fees into a smaller number of tiers. Each tier is then assigned a charge. The fee assessed to the merchant for each transaction is calculated using the tiered rate instead of the actual interchange rate for the transaction type.

INTERCHANGE US / PASS-THROUGH

Arguably one of the most transparent pricing methodologies, it’s also one of the most complex to understand. Wholesale interchange rates are passed through to the provider. The payment processor charges a fixed margin (discount rate) plus a transaction fee above the interchange rate.

80% conversion rate

A leading specialty vertical ISV converted its customer portfolio in less than six months because of Nuvei’s fair and transparent merchant pricing.

Find a partner that offers special pricing for nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations that provide charitable and low-cost veterinary care.

Your partner should offer a meet-or-beat pricing promise to help drive customer adoption.

A proven track record

All payment companies have their strengths and areas of expertise. Look for a partner who has a proven track record in practice management.

Here are a few items that should be on your checklist:

. A vertically tailored approach to partnership with an understanding of the challenges facing veterinary practices.

. Experience powering payments for practices of all sizes and their software providers.

. Sales and marketing programs and supporting resources to help partners convert existing customer portfolios and drive new software sales.

. A proven track record of helping veterinary software providers make payments a leading revenue stream.

With 25+ years of industry experience combined with our vertical market focus, Nuvei deeply understands the needs of veterinary ISVs and the practices they serve.

Flexible Partnership Programs

If you’re like many ISVs, you’ve either been with your current provider for years or have chosen to not offer integrated payments.

And, while the payments industry (and your business) has evolved by leaps and bounds, it’s likely your partnership structure has remained the same or it’s been a while since you’ve explored adding payments to your application. Does your current setup still meet your needs, or could you be better served and better serve your users?

When selecting a payments partner, recognize that what you needed at inception, what you need today, and what you will need in 24 months are all likely different. Select a partner with flexible program structures designed to evolve as you win business together.

Here are the structures your partner should support:

REFERRAL PARTNERSHIPS

Allows ISVs to stay focused on core business with a partner handling payments by your side. Referrals are sent to the payments partner and residuals from merchant transaction profits create a lucrative revenue stream.

MANAGED PAYFAC

Managed payment facilitation gives ISVs the perks of frictionless boarding and instant auto-approvals but leaves the risks, liabilities, and costs to the payments partner

TRADITIONAL PAYFAC

ISVs who elect to become payment facilitators receive maximum revenue earning potential and are responsible for controlling sales and operations while also assuming all costs, risks, and responsibility for the entire payments process.

ISO PROGRAMS

Independent sales organization (ISO) programs allow you to market your solution directly to your customer base under your name for a cohesive customer experience.

After checking these boxes, dive in to understand what is required to transition between program structures.

Oftentimes, ISVs must integrate to different processing platforms—a disruptive and time-consuming process.

Look for a partner who supports all program types through a single platform to allow for easy transitions through all stages of program maturity.

ISVs rate Nuvei’s platform integration

80% simpler than their previous payment integrations.

Service and Support

The third-party partners you choose for your software act as a direct extension of your business which means customer support philosophies, and service levels should align.

In addition to offering world-class merchant services, it’s also imperative that your partnership is managed by the same standard. Here’s what to look for:

A dedicated team of subject matter experts is assigned to support the partnership—Inside Sales, Marketing, Operations, Integration, and Account Management should all be included.

100% satisfied customers

In 2021, all of Nuvei customers surveyed said they would hire their customer support advisor.

Quarterly strategic planning sessions and business reviews are held to define goals and objectives and track against progress.

Easy to implement, turnkey, and custom marketing programs are available (at no expense)—to help you capture market share and easily drive customer payments adoption.

Support when it matters most. If something goes wrong on Saturday evening, do you have someone to call, who will answer the phone, take ownership and make it right?

Payments designed to accelerate your business

NUVEI KNOWS VETERINARY PRACTICE MANAGEMENT

For years, we have powered payment acceptance for many practices by working in true alliance with leading ISVs in this specialty.

Software providers choose Nuvei because of our innovative payment solutions that empower our clients and partners to drive exceptional patient experiences.

We leverage best-in-class technologies to address today’s needs and tomorrow’s opportunities.

Our simple, straightforward yet thoughtfully designed programs make strong growth and profitability possible.

If you are looking for a highly specialized partner to level up your offering and make payments your leading revenue stream, we’d love to talk.

Come see why over 100,000 customers and 300+ ISVs trust Nuvei to power their payments.

ABOUT NUVEI

Nuvei (Nasdaq: NVEI) (TSX: NVEI) is the Canadian fintech company accelerating the business of clients around the world. Nuvei’s modular, flexible and scalable technology allows leading companies to accept next-gen payments, offer all payout options and benefit from card issuing, banking, risk and fraud management services.

Connecting businesses to their customers in more than 200 markets, with local acquiring in 45+ markets, 150 currencies and more than 600+ alternative payment methods, Nuvei provides the technology and insights for customers and partners to succeed locally and globally with one integration.

For more information, visit nuvei.com/