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Best practices for Online deposits and payments
Best practices for Online deposits and payments

This article describes some topics you need to be aware of when using online deposits.

Richard avatar
Written by Richard
Updated over a week ago

Deposit settings

SEPA vs. Credit Card

When setting up the online pre-payments, you need to choose which payment methods you wish to accept for deposits (through Stripe).

As you already may know, some payment methods are immediate (e.g. credit card, iDeal, etc.), and some take more time to process (up to several days). It's important to be aware of this! Also, some payment methods can be disputed quite easily, e.g., SEPA payments.

SEPA payments take several days to process. This means that the amount of the deposit will be available in the patient's wallet several days after making the deposit. Because of this, the patient's visit could be already taking place while the wallet is still not upgraded with the deposit. The patient will not be able to spend the deposit in the clinic.

Additionally, patients can dispute a SEPA payment up to 80 days post payment. Disputing a SEPA payment refunds the patient immediately with the amount of the deposit. Disputing a SEPA payment is easier than disputing a credit card payment. The issuer will always start an investigation to understand why a dispute is applicable.

Therefore we advise NOT to use SEPA payments for deposits!

For more information please review Stripe's guide regarding the available payment methods: https://stripe.com/payments/payment-methods-guide

Refunds always through the system

We strongly advise not to perform any cash refunds. Always perform refunds via Clinicminds for the following reasons: First, it will execute the right correction to the patient's wallet. Second, there's no chance of refunding more than the deposit amount! Third and most important, after refunding in cash a patient is still able to start a dispute e.g. regarding a SEPA deposit and receive back the amount of the deposit. This way a double refund is probable to happen.

Wallet discrepancy

If a discrepancy of the wallet or suspicion of a discrepancy exists, please make sure to review the Stripe dashboard. The Stripe dashboard always prevails.

Deleting a patient, what about the wallet?

When a complete patient file is deleted, the wallet will be deleted together with the patient details. All transactions will remain in your Stripe account.

Archiving a patient file will keep a record of the patient's history and wallet but the amount in the wallet can't be used anymore.

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