Text to Pay Mobile Payment Solutions

The payment processing experience is continually evolving, with more customers than ever expecting a seamless payment process to occur at their fingertips. With our smart phones an increasingly integral part of our lives, it’s no surprise that text to pay payments are becoming an essential merchant services solution for many businesses.

Text to pay services allow merchants to send a payment request to customers via SMS text message. The customer can then be completed via text responses or by clicking a secure payment link and completing the transaction on their mobile device. The transaction is completed quickly, simply, and securely.

In this guide, we’ll dive into text to pay payment processing, including how it works, its benefits, and whether it’s right for your business.

Key Takeaways

• As a marketing channel, text messaging features a significantly higher open rate than email marketing and offers a direct connection to your customer.
• Text to pay payments offer a complementary customer experience with a streamlined payment process.
• Businesses can send personalized payment links and reminder requests through pay by text solutions.
• Text to pay is also called pay by text, text payments, Text2Pay, and mobile payments.

While text to pay services are newer to the payment processing landscape, SMS technology is already a well-established and reliable part of your customers’ lives, making adoption of pay by text solutions relatively straightforward. Today, customers’ wallets look different, with many individuals opting for a digital wallet, mobile payments, and other innovative payment methods.

How Text to Pay Payment Processing Works

Text to pay utilizes SMS (Short Message Service) technology to let your customers complete payments on their smartphones, all with a few simple clicks. Text to pay is one of several types of mobile payment solutions.

Text to pay starts with an opt-in confirmation to ensure that your customers are on board with receiving SMS text messages as part of the payment process. From there, text to pay allows customers to pay either via the text conversation directly or through secure payment links, depending on how you build your payment experience.

The most user-friendly SMS payment solutions integrate with your payment processing ecosystem, as payment reminders can be sent to your customers and they can reply to confirm payment, completing the transaction.

Secure Payment Links

Text to pay can also include the sending of customized secure payment links to allow payment without the use of online accounts, or to allow customers who are not fully integrated with an online account to make guest payments.

A secure payment link can be sent via a concise text message which includes the link to a payment portal. There, the customer can complete the payment and get a receipt in their browser of choice.

Secure payment links can be automated with a customized workflow that best suits the needs of your customers. It can include reminders, receipts, recurring payments, and updates about past due balances or other key information.

Do Customers Want Text to Pay?

To put it simply—yes, customers want the option to make quick, easy payments via text message on their mobile phones. Text to pay is an increasingly popular alternative to email payment reminders, as many emails can get lost to an overstuffed inbox or a rarely checked spam folder.

Text to pay payments are becoming increasingly popular across a multitude of industries, including:

• Restaurants: Restaurants can make the checkout experience easier than ever with text to pay, saving your employees time without skimping on the dining experience.
• Utilities: The timely payment of monthly bills is essential for utilities providers, and text to pay can provide prompt reminders.
• Healthcare: For healthcare organizations, the typical healthcare billing process leads to outstanding bills for many patients, and text to pay can quickly notify them to resolve those balances.
• Retail: Online and brick-and-mortar retail stores can use pay by text for ultimate flexibility. For example, text to pay can be especially useful for pop-up events or booths at festivals and fairs.
• Insurance: Insurance providers can leverage pay by text to collect premiums and recurring payments easily and quickly.

As a one mobile payment solution, text to pay is one building block of your complete payment ecosystem. By working with a trusted merchant services provider like FirsTech, text to pay payments add minimal stress to your workload while seamlessly completing your transactions.

5 Benefits of Text to Pay Payment Processing

Text to pay payments are here to stay, especially in the post-pandemic world where digital payments are king. Let’s break down a few of the top benefits of text to pay solutions for your business.

1. No Equipment Required

Text to pay payments rely on equipment your customers already have in their hands: their smartphones. Your business doesn’t have to commit to buying or leasing additional equipment like payment terminals in order to implement text to pay technology. 

The text to pay process also eliminates the potential for equipment failure or troubleshooting that can take up valuable time and lead to poor customer experience.

2. Convenient Customer Experience

Text to pay is considered a “one tap” payment method, and customers can complete their payment at any time, from anywhere. Text to pay payments are highly accessible and provide a comfortable, convenient payment experience for customers in all manners of industries.

Additionally, many customers are shifting to mobile payment methods, including text to pay. Everyday consumers now expect to be able to extensively manage their funds via banking apps, while also using tools like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, and Cash App to complete transactions.

With text to pay, your customers no longer have to search through their email inbox or sort through their mail for an invoice, as their payment reminder is delivered directly to their phone. Text to pay can be a critical element of providing an improved customer experience.

3. Higher Open Rates

Text to pay is an especially engaging payment channel, featuring higher open rates than traditional emails and eliminating the potential to overlook or lose physical mail. Text to pay messages are delivered directly to your customer on a device they look at frequently throughout their day.

On top of that, text to pay SMS messages have to be short and to the point due to the character limitation of SMS messages. This means your message is more likely to be not only received but also opened and understood by your customer—which is an exceptionally unique experience in today’s world of information overload.

4. Personalized Messaging

Text to pay offers a quick, easy level of customization that can make a huge difference in building a strong customer relationship. Text to pay can operate separately from SMS marketing campaigns or in conjunction with them to build the ultimate customer experience that goes beyond the transaction.

Customers also greatly appreciate pay by text payment reminders that give them the opportunity to avoid a potential late fee. Both your business and your customers can benefit from this type of personalization that comes with pay by text payments.

5. Fast, Timely Payments

Pay by text payments allow you to speed up the payment cycle and cut down on unpaid invoices. Payments are completed in real time, saving your accounting team from any potential headaches. Additionally, the payment process is completely secure when handled by a trusted third party payment processor like FirsTech.

When a customer has an outstanding balance, you can easily collect that balance through a payment reminder message. For the customer, the experience of quick and timely payment by text is also hugely beneficial.

Text to Pay Best Practices

When implementing mobile payments like text to pay, there are several best practices to keep in mind. Following these guidelines will ensure your customers are comfortable utilizing text payments as a transactional channel.

Text to pay best practices include:

• Get opt-in consent. Be sure to provide clear messaging about opt-in and opt-out selections. Follow all relevant regulations.
• Be concise. Stay within the character limit, which is typically 160 characters, and provide short, branded links.
• Be thoughtful about frequency. Just like emails and other marketing channels, your customers don’t want to be overwhelmed with any form of messaging, including texts.
• Personalize your messages. When you can include the amount due or customer name, do so to offer a customized experience.
• Use a trusted SMS provider. This ensures a safe messaging experience and the highest likelihood of deliverability. 

By working with a payment processing provider like FirsTech, you can feel confident that best practices for pay by text payments are being followed.

Discover Pay by Text Solutions from FirsTech

Today’s consumers have everything they need just a click away on their phones. By offering mobile payments like pay by text, your business can meet those expectations and deliver a seamless payment experience.

FirsTech is more than an SMS payment provider, with a complete suite of payment processing solutions that meets all of your business needs and customer expectations. With our pay by text feature, your customers can receive a due date alert via text message that executes payment with a simple response.

To learn more about pay by text solutions for your business, or to explore other services from FirsTech, get in touch with our team today.