Overview
With this feature, practices can offer patients the convenience of making credit card payments while reducing payment processing costs. This feature automatically adds transaction fees to patient invoices paid by credit card, ensuring practices keep more of their revenue. Regulations vary by state, so practices must ensure compliance before enabling it in their account.
This document outlines how the feature works, key compliance requirements met by Hint’s software design, and further compliance due diligence a practice should consider before implementing a surcharge policy.
How does it work?
When a practice turns on this feature, the payment experience for patients changes in two ways.
The Hint application:
Notifies users about credit card fees when they add a credit card as a payment method.
Automatically adds transaction fees to patient invoices and online signup totals. These fees are clearly displayed as a separate line item, and the fee amount is the same as those on your practice’s Hint subscription plan.
The following are compliance requirements for surcharging that determine how and when Hint adds surcharges to patient invoices. Our application design for this feature ensures each of these requirements is fully accounted for.
However, practices should be aware of the following:
Surcharging is not allowed on debit or prepaid cards. ✅
Hint ensures surcharges are only added to credit card payments. It does not pass through any fees if a patient pays by debit card, HSA/FSA, or bank account.
Surcharges must be disclosed before a customer completes a transaction. ✅
Surcharge fees appear as a separate item on invoices. Patients are also notified of fees when they add a credit card as a payment method.
Surcharging cannot exceed the cost of card acceptance. ✅
Hint solely passes through the practice’s transactions fees, including the amount charged by interchange and the payment processor. The app does not allow practices to add a flat amount on top of the passthrough.
Set-Up
Practices can enable the feature once they have finished setting up Hint Payments.
Ready to set this up? Follow the steps below to enable the feature for your practice.
Enabling the Feature
To turn this on for your practice:
Open your Practice Admin Settings.
Select Providers & Patients from the menu.
Open the Patients tab.
Click "Agree & Enable" under Pass Credit Card Fees to Patients.
By enabling this feature, you acknowledge that you have completed the necessary steps to ensure compliance for your practice. Once enabled, fees will be automatically added and viewable on all patient invoices paid by credit card.
Once enabled, transaction fees will automatically be added to invoices for patients using credit cards.
Patient Experience
When paying with a credit card, patients will see a clear message about the fee. This message appears in multiple places:
Online Signup – A note is shown when selecting a credit card, and the checkout total updates to reflect the fee.
Patient Portal – Under Payment Options, where patients can update their payment method.
Payment Info Requests – If patients receive an email request to add a payment method, the message appears under Payment Sources.
Patients can also choose to pay with a bank account or debit card to avoid credit card fees.
A paid invoice will also reflect the fees paid:
To disable
If you would like to turn off the feature, simply turn the toggle off under settings. If you want to turn it back on in the future, simply Click ‘Agree & Enable’ again.