AR Automation's Pay by Text allows your company to easily accept payments by text message to send automatic follow-ups, confirmations, receipts, and payment reminders.

Benefits

Automatic Payment Reminders sent via SMS or email
Simplest level of PCI compliance: SAQ-A
Secure payment links for single or multiple invoices
Increase shopper confidence by allowing them to enter their own sensitive payment details
Ability to securely store payment methods at a customer level
Surcharging
Recurring billing
Allow customers to enter a payment amount
Sync payment data with ERP systems

Supported Payment Methods

ACH/ECP (electronic check)
Apple Pay
Credit cards
Google Pay
PayPal
SEPA
Direct Debit

Requirements

If you need an AR Automation account, go to the AR site to sign up.
If you need a BlueSnap account, go to the BlueSnap site to get started.

How to Set Up AR Account for Pay by Text

Step 1: Add Customers and Invoices to your AR account

With Accounting System — AR Automation can be used in conjunction with your accounting system to synchronize your customers, invoices and payments automatically every two hours (excluding QuickBooks Desktop, which requires the manual launch of synchronization).
Learn how to set up and launch synchronization with any supported accounting system.
Using CSV Import — Learn how to import customers and invoices using CSV file import.
Manually Create Customers and Invoices — Learn how to add Customers and Invoices manually to your AR account.

Step 2: Send Payment Links to your Customers

For the Pay by Text solution, SMS messages should be the selected form of communication. Then, add Payment Links to the SMS template. You can send out SMS and any other communications to your customers directly from the Customer Record page.

To send the SMS to your customers please follow these steps:

Navigate to the Customer list page.
Select the customer you want to send communication to and click on the customer’s name to open their record page.
Click on the text message icon in the top right corner of the page.
Create the SMS message by specifying the message body. To personalize your SMS, you can use placeholders to include specific information about the customer, balance or company. To access the placeholder list, select the + icon in the editor menu.

If you want to send text messages containing links for your customers to make a payment, add Payment Links to the SMS template. Payment Links are unique links for customers and invoices and can be added to your cadence step as a call-to-action placeholder option. A call-to-action lets you direct your customers to a specific action (such as "Pay your invoice", "Pay your balance" or "Update the payment method on file"). To add a call-to-action, click the + icon to access the placeholder menu, then select the call-to-action.
To send the SMS message click the Send button.

Step 3: Create Automated Workflows for Sending Payment Links to your Customers

In AR Automation you create automated rules that send communications to your customers automatically. These rules are called cadences. A cadence is a series of communication rules that trigger emails, SMS, letters, and call reminders based on the age, status, or balance of customers and invoices. Each step in a cadence is completely customizable and can be configured to be sent automatically or only after approval. You can choose one of our pre-written cadences to edit or create your own.

After a cadence is assigned, all cadence steps are scheduled and can be viewed in the To-Do List. After an invoice is fully paid, it is automatically removed from the cadence and all unsent steps are canceled.

For instructions on creating and editing cadences, refer to Cadences.

For the Pay by Text solution, create a cadence with SMS as the communication type and add Payment Links to the SMS template. Payment Links can be added by using the Invoice button and Pay Balance button placeholders.

Invoice button: Directs customers to an online version of the invoice that triggered the reminder. Integrated payment options are available to accept payment for this invoice. Payment options are configured under Settings > Preferences > Payments.
Pay Balance button: Directs customers to a summary of open invoices where they can then make a payment for all invoices at once or individually.

Your SMS template includes the message you want to send to your customers with the unique payment links.

Step 4: Load your AR Account Balance

For sending SMS and making phone calls, AR Automation is integrated with a third-party provider that provides us with communication tools. Each SMS has an additional cost and the funds for sending messages are debited from your AR balance.

To refill your balance, navigate to Account > Billing in the left navigation panel. You can add a credit card for adding funds to your account under the Payment Method section.

Under the Balance section, load your balance by clicking Reload Balance and entering the amount you want to credit. Also, you can enable the Auto-Reloading option to automatically reload your AR balance when you run out of funds. The Balance section also displays the history of charges showing the date, amount, and description.

FAQs

Which phone number is be used for sending SMS?

By default, you are assigned to a random phone number. If you want to set a custom phone number, please contact our support team.

What is the price for sending SMS?

The price for one SMS segment is based on your AR Automation plan and processing volume. Please contact your account manager or our support team to get more information about pricing for your account.

What is an SMS Segment?

SMS segments are the character batches used to measure the text size. There is a fixed character limit for each text and when the character limit is exceeded, one text is converted into two. Standard SMS encoding is GSM-7 and has up to 160 characters per segment. However, when you send messages with non-GSM characters such as emojis or accented characters, we have to use a different type of encoding. The segment characters limit is then 70 characters.

How can I make sure the SMS was delivered?

Each Customer Record page has a Communication tab where we display all the communications that were successfully delivered. On the ToDo page, we display all the scheduled communications as well as communications that failed to deliver. If you hover your mouse over the Failed icon, you see the reason for the failure. Find more information about the ToDo section in this guide.

How can customers stop receiving SMS?

We support opt-out keywords, so customers can stop receiving text messages by replying with messages such as STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE or CANCEL. When an end user texts the word STOP to your toll-free number, the user is opted-out of further messaging from your number and receive this auto-reply:

NETWORK MSG: You replied with the word "stop" which blocks all texts sent from this number. Text back "unstop" to receive messages again.

If the user then sends the word START or UNSTOP, they are opted back in to receive messages from your number, and receive this auto-reply:

NETWORK MSG: You have replied "unstop" and will begin receiving messages again from this number.