#866: It’s Time to Modernize Payment Processing!

The Dental A Team Podcast

Mark Rasmussen of Moolah is on the podcast with Kiera! Moolah is all about modernization of payment in dental practices. Mark and Kiera talk about Moolah and its full suite of payment tools, what modernized payments look like in dentistry, software/devices to use, honest processing fees, and more.

Bonus: Dental A-Team listeners get a pricing discount: www.moolah.cc/thedentalateam

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.622)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am super jazz. I have a new guest to the podcast, new to the Dental A Team family. I have been watching this company for the last several years. I've had my eyes on them. I recommended them several times, but I'm super excited because I want to help you guys modernize how you guys are taking payments in the dental world. I feel like dentistry is a little old school. So I'm super jazzed to have the CEO and founder of Moolah, Mark Rasmussen on today. Mark, how you doing over there in beautiful Mexico today?

Mark Rasmussen (00:00.76)

Thank you.

Mark Rasmussen (00:30.552)

I am doing fantastic here. Thank you for allowing us to be part of the podcast. Excited to join you. And as you mentioned, yes, in down here in sunny Mexico, a little family vacation, happy to take a little break and talk with your community.

Kiera Dent (00:35.598)

Thank you.

Kiera Dent (00:45.934)

Amazing. Well, I was like, that's pure dedication. I offered to have you rescheduled because I'm like, you're in Mexico, go with the family. But I also know sometimes work is kind of fun on vacation. It's like, you know, you guys sit at the pool, I'll go have some alone time. But hopefully.

Mark Rasmussen (00:50.072)

Haha.

Mark Rasmussen (00:59.608)

Listen, you're winning in life if you feel that your work is worthwhile. Taking a break from a little vacation, that's how you know you're winning. So yeah, glad to do it, excited to do it.

Kiera Dent (01:08.079)

Awesome. Well, I do love Moolah a ton. So I just want, Mark, let's kind of give the listeners, you're new to the podcast. Like I said, I've watched you guys for years. So can you kind of walk the listeners through Moolah, Mark, how did you get into dental payment processing? Walk us through kind of like the history of you and Moolah.

Mark Rasmussen (01:24.888)

Yep.

Sure, awesome. Okay, so I have been around electronic payments, just non -dental for about 27, 28 years. My God, I'm dating myself, but yeah, about 28 years. And...

Kiera Dent (01:38.446)

Hey, it's fine. I'm sure you're probably like 29. You probably started this business when you were one. That's my assumption, right? Or like you got into it. Yeah, of course. You're fine. 30. Never looking younger than 30 over there. You're looking good.

Mark Rasmussen (01:43.064)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's go with that. Yep. Exactly. I've actually, this is not gray. I actually make this gray. This is normally dark, but I just tried to distinguish myself and try and go gray.

Kiera Dent (01:57.07)

I thought you were trying to like match your like mullah swag, right? Like, you know, like beard and mullah, like same thing so that we look covered head to toe. You got the black glasses, you know, the white beard. It's not gray. It's just white. You're trying to go on brand. Yeah, you're welcome.

Mark Rasmussen (02:00.632)

yeah, there we go. Mm -hmm. I like it.

Mark Rasmussen (02:06.936)

I like it. I like it. Exactly. Exactly. So, so been around payments forever. About four years ago, we got invited into the dental community from our friends at Dental Success Network. And so we started going to their events. And, you know, they loved our model. Our model has always kind of been about simplicity. Even when we were non dental, we were all about like,

you know, no contracts, no monthly fees, we provide the hardware. And so that kind of was really resonating with the dentist. But the constant feedback that we were getting was like, hey, this is cool. But we really want technology, we really want all of our payment activity posting into the patient ledger. And so we set about to go build that out and took us a couple years and but you know, ended up with a phenomenal platform that allows us to really kind of serve up.

this full suite of payment tools for dental practice. That's in practice payments, of course, storing patient cards, being able to create and manage payment plans, be able to create and manage in -house membership or discount plans, sending out electronic requests via text or email to collect on a balance, allowing the practice to have a online payment submission, you know, so those patients can make payments after hours. So just this full suite of payment tools.

that are posting back into the PMS. And really we think serving up the full suite of tools that today's practice would need.

Kiera Dent (03:40.206)

for sure. And I think that that's brilliant because you actually are speaking the language. Me as a team member, that was always our big thing with the processors of great. I'm glad you got this great one, but they don't go into the PMS system. They're not easy for me. But I'm curious, Mark, and this is something where you can be honest. Dental A Team is like no filter. I tried really hard to just have a good time on the podcast. How dated did you feel dentistry was? Yeah, of course. Yeah. But I mean, you're totally. Yeah, of course. Do whatever you want. I mean, I'm here for it.

Mark Rasmussen (04:00.056)

Nice. Should I grab a tequila shot and serve Asus right now? Or like how much of a good time are we having here? I'll stick to water.

Kiera Dent (04:08.718)

Yeah, okay. But I'm curious when you came because you didn't experience dentistry before you came into it. How dated was dentistry as an industry from your perspective? Like, were you a little like blown away? Like, I kind of say like, we're horse and carriage sometimes and some like, the fact that we didn't have online payments blows my mind, right? Could you please call during eight and five to make your payment to pay me? Like, we're gonna make it hard for you. How dated did you feel like dentistry was when you guys entered the industry? No judgment. I just

Mark Rasmussen (04:16.024)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (04:30.424)

Right. Right.

Kiera Dent (04:37.454)

Because I think, like I said, it's horrible.

Mark Rasmussen (04:38.008)

No judgment. I won't call it will protect the innocent. I won't call it any names. But yes, when I got into the space, I was blown away because there are some, you know, big legacy providers from payments perspective that had all of these legacy relationships with all the PMS is and I kind of just felt like they've been resting on their laurels for a really long time. Like they have the relationship and then they kind of stopped innovating. And so, yeah, I was, you know,

Kiera Dent (04:41.142)

you

Kiera Dent (05:03.662)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (05:07.352)

surprised that there was a lot of room to make improvements. And so yeah, it's been a great time. And not only improvements on the technology, but even the methods of I'll just call it old school solution providers, payment providers out there. Most of them are old school. And what I mean by that is that, you know, everything from, you know, the signup process or learning about what the fees are going to be.

If you go, for example, go take a look and again, I'm not naming any big names, but go, we all know what they are. If you go to their website and you go to see like, all right, well, how much does merchant services cost from this company? None of them have pricing or rates on their website by design, right? They're all meant to submit a contact form and then wait to have a salesperson call you back. And then, you know, it's just, it feels, it always felt very like car sales, like no disrespect to anybody who sells cars.

Kiera Dent (05:52.014)

Peace.

Kiera Dent (05:58.318)

Right.

Mark Rasmussen (06:04.92)

but it felt very car salesman like of what that experience looked like. And so we were always a big believer of like, we wanted to make, you know, getting signed up for processing less sales like and more transactional like, and how do you do that? You wear your pricing on your sleeve. Like you can go to, you know, the Moolah website, you know exactly what our processing costs. There's no surprises. You don't need to speak with anybody to get pitched on what the services are.

Kiera Dent (06:17.998)

Mm -hmm.

Kiera Dent (06:28.878)

Thank you.

Mark Rasmussen (06:30.584)

And so again, I always liked that. I like more of a transactional experience than a sales experience in kind of, you know, all my aspects of life. So, you know, that element, we saw room to improvement. So, you know, easy to know what the pricing is. And then from a signup perspective, everything can be done online, right? You don't have to have this salesperson send you, you know, paper applications or PDF applications, and you don't need to fill those out and then submit them to the bank and then wait for a couple of days for underwriting.

Kiera Dent (06:34.99)

Thank you.

Kiera Dent (06:58.158)

Thank you.

Mark Rasmussen (06:59.768)

maybe have to provide financials or tax returns, like all that. So with us, we removed all those elements and it's just very easy to know what it costs, very easy to sign up within seconds. So again, just removing the barriers to entry on the actual signup process is a big lift in experience as well.

Kiera Dent (07:11.566)

Thank you.

Kiera Dent (07:18.862)

Totally agree. And I think I think that that's what's so fun is having these disruptors come into dentistry of this is what you guys could expect from other people but you're right like it is kind of dated and dentistry is such a Relationship industry. I mean I say lab people and reps are so lucky because dentists are so loyal to them So I really really do love that you guys are disrupting it and like you said it's making payments easier and so I was just curious if you can talk about like

Mark Rasmussen (07:39.028)

yeah.

Kiera Dent (07:45.134)

what does modernized payments look like? Like what should practices, like what's the standard that we should be living at right now? So offices can kind of almost checklist them of am I doing this in my practice? And if not, maybe I should consider a different processor.

Mark Rasmussen (07:59.064)

Yeah. So the first thing we touched on is I think you should look at a vendor who can provide you the immediate kind of instant on type of experience. I think the whole legacy of, you know, multi -day underwriting with the bank having to have a hard credit inquiry pull is unnecessary today. Although again, a lot of the legacy providers work that way. So an instant on, I think, you know, modern, you know, modern payments day means not having to lock yourself into any contracts. I'm a big believer in that. Like,

Kiera Dent (08:08.942)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (08:29.4)

Any vendor that you work with, I think for the most part should allow you to exist in kind of like a month to month environment, right? Because if you're doing your job as a vendor, you don't need to lock anybody else up, right? They're going to stay with you if you're doing your job right. So I'm a firm believer in no contracts. Another thing I'm going to recommend is stop locking yourself into having to buy the hardware or software, right? And most of the vendors will either charge exorbitant amounts for the hardware,

or they'll try and put you into a non -cancellable lease for the hardware or rentals. All that do away with, you know, shameless plug. Of course, we don't do that, but we're not the only ones. There's a few other great vendors out there where they'll give you the hardware or they'll provide it to you at a fair price. Don't overpay for hardware or lock yourselves in a contract. You know, from a tactical standpoint of like payments specifically,

Here's the thing is that I think a modern practice should have. Obviously, you know, in practice, all the latest and greatest. So what is that? That's of course, old school MagSwipe, that's EMB chip card capabilities. That's also Apple Pay, Google Pay, kind of the tap to pay. That's a great convenience for your patients. Wireless devices are a great add on for the practice, right? So they don't have to be stuck at the front desk. You know, you should have devices that can go anywhere in the practice, you know, operatory, consult rooms, et cetera.

Wireless devices are a big lift. Storing patient cards, I think is a great convenience as well. I talked to a lot of practices who really love that because it's interesting. You talk to the front desk, nobody really wants to talk about or like, nobody likes the transactional element of asking for money and having to collect money, right? So if you can take that element out of your experience with a patient at the front desk,

Kiera Dent (10:02.798)

So genius.

Mark Rasmussen (10:25.592)

and you're like, hey, would you want us to put that on the on the visa we have in file? Great. That's easy. You know, so storing patient cards, I think is a big one. You know, being able to offer, you know, especially when you're when you're building out treatment plans and those dollar amounts to get higher, being able to offer the patients, you know, multiple payment options, obviously credit card, but then even being able to take that credit card payment and break it out, you know, your kids braces. Great. Let's let's set that up so that we can easily just charge out $100 a month or whatever the case may be.

Kiera Dent (10:29.006)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (10:55.576)

So being able to have multiple payment options to offer the patient is phenomenal. Other things that I, yeah, please, yeah.

Kiera Dent (11:03.054)

I just want to plug in that one real quick on the payments because you guys have modernized it because a lot of people like well We did that but I remember my gosh I had so many credit cards that I had to remember to run as the office manager I had to like make sure it was the date then I finally got smart and I was like let's do it on the first and the 15th and not just like every day of the month but there's still offices that are trying to remember to run all these cards and for you guys just to set it up it's like a set it and forget it like of course if it declines so much easier we just go check on that but

Mark Rasmussen (11:21.24)

Right. Right.

Kiera Dent (11:31.982)

I think to just pin on there, your practice might be doing it, but this is automatically doing it through the software where your team doesn't have to try and remember it, saves so much time from a team member having to do it.

Mark Rasmussen (11:41.944)

100%, 100%. And so many, I talked to a lot of offices that before they connected with us, many of them were like self -admitted and they're like, hey, they're like, I'm not proud to share this, but I'd be like, so how are you guys managing your reoccurring payments? So like, we have card numbers just written down in Notepad and I just make myself a reminder and outlook to go ahead and pull those out. I'm like, okay, you didn't tell me that, okay. But that's kind of the reality. So, you know.

being storing car data in binders. Yeah, it's exactly much safer. But having those card numbers available to you and where they're delivering not written down anywhere. So where they can be compromised is you know what they refer to as PCI compliant best practices. So being able to do that, not have your practice, you know, exposed to the you know, the dangers of having card information, you know,

Kiera Dent (12:12.27)

They're binders. Binders, Mark.

Mark Rasmussen (12:39.224)

exposed and compromised is huge. And of course, any reputable, you know, vendor that you're dealing with, that's going to lie to store patient cards, they're going to have it where it's tokenized. None of the tokenized card data of course, is ever going to be touching any of the practices servers. So the practices, what they refer to as is out of scope, you know, they're not actually dealing with and holding any card numbers. So that's, that's a huge element as well. what else? you know, I've seen get popular over the last couple of years.

memberships, in -house memberships and in -house discount plans are gaining a lot of traction. And I get it, right? It's great for the patient, it's great for the practice, gets the patient in the chair more, the practice kind of gets some reoccurring revenue going, it's a win -win. And there's a lot of great vendors out there in the space that just focus on that. But again, that's a feature set that we built into Moolah.

that allow you to kind of create and manage your own in -house discount plan. So having that, I think is a big part of today's modern practices. Sending electronic requests, right? Collecting on balances. The old school way of sending paper statements is dead, right? And the evolution of that went like, okay, it was paper statements and then everybody realized that nobody is going through snail mail anymore. And then it went to, okay, cool, let's be able to send electronic email requests.

which was an uptick in lift in response rates. And then, you know, beyond that, you know, text requests kind of like even went even further. I mean, the response rate of just going from email requests to text requests is significant. So, but, you know, giving the practice ability to collect on these balances and send those out electronically, automatic reminders, drip campaigns and all of that.

and allowing the patient to kind of like, you know, make that payment when it's convenient for them, you know, if it's at their home, on their couch, on their phone late at night, doing a quick Apple Pay transaction. That's what it's all about, you know, is making, you know, easy for your patients to interact and handle, you know, their billing issues with you is the ultimate. The other thing I'll touch on is, you know, online payment, right?

Kiera Dent (14:49.294)

Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (14:54.36)

So allowing that patient be able to go to your site and click a button, say, hey, make an after hours payment and be able to make that payment after hours. That's another big, you know, we think kind of best practices to do for today's modern practice. And then really the cherry on top of all these things is that these things in itself are great, but really to really elevate this is all this payment tech we talked about is then having an automatically post into the PMS real time is where the magic really happens. And so.

I highly recommend kind of all those touch points as well as having it also integrate directly back in your PMS. That's where the magic really kind of happens, you know?

Kiera Dent (15:31.182)

for sure.

And so Mark, I'm curious when you guys do that and goes back into the PMS, does it split because people will like get annoyed when it's like a split payment and my family balance might be $1 ,000, but only 25 come to Kiera and the rest goes to Jason. Does it split or do they need to manually split at the practice level?

Mark Rasmussen (15:52.472)

You can do it in two ways. So I'll speak for our system. When you run a payment in Crown, which is our payment platform, you can either have that payment be an unallocated payments, right? And just post to the ledger at the guarantor level. And then you can decide where you want to split that up to, or you can actually, from our system, you can do that transaction, that payment allocated to procedure. And you can pick, when you're doing that allocation, you can pick within the family members,

and at the procedure level of where that payment's going to be allocated to, just as if you were to natively do it in the PMS. So you can do it, you know, like for prepayments, right? Prepayments is something where it's unallocated and then you can assign it afterwards. Or again, you can just assign the payment to the procedure right out of the gate, either way. Yeah.

Kiera Dent (16:27.502)

That's awesome.

Mm -hmm.

Kiera Dent (16:41.39)

That's awesome. And for patient or for practice, like of course they're going to feel concerned about like, yeah, but Mark, if people are making payments and I don't know and they're doing it at night, how do I make sure I don't miss any of these payments? So kind of what's Moolah's process to make sure they don't miss it.

Mark Rasmussen (16:53.272)

Great question. Yeah, great question. So first thing is that we notify the practices in two ways. One is they'll get an email when a payment's made, you know, anytime, whether it's after hours or they're gonna get an email that hits their inbox. And then within our software itself, in the top header, we have this notification bell that anytime there is a transaction that's been made after hours, like a website payment or text to pay, it's gonna let them notify them that it was done. So they're not gonna miss it.

Kiera Dent (17:20.686)

So Mark, as you said all these things, I just thought, to me it felt like I was just talking to a normal website that I purchase on all the time, right? Like I think about Amazon. Amazon's so easy. I make payments. I think about the hospital even where my husband works, like when I go see my doctor. They're not sending me paper statements. I don't think I've gotten a paper statement from a medical office in so long. I also just thought I went to therapy the other day and they're like, do you want it on your card on file? And like,

It's crazy because that's how we live in our day -to -day lives of all the things we as consumers are consuming, but yet in our dental practices, we're so far behind, which is why I'm obsessed with you guys as a company. And why I wanted to bring you on the podcast and share you with our community is because the reality is, this is so...

Mark Rasmussen (18:03.544)

Thank you.

Kiera Dent (18:05.806)

like up and coming, but you're also I love the passion that comes from you. Like I can tell that you're not just somebody who's like, here we are. You're constantly thinking like, all right, what's the next thing and how are we going to make this even easier? And how can we make this so much simpler for the practices? And I think getting on board with companies that are young, that are innovative. I know you said you're only like 30 based on like you starting like in the industry at one years old. I think you're only 30 years old now, right? But you've constantly made it and brought you, but you brought this young energy with you of staying tech and saying savvy and

Mark Rasmussen (18:26.104)

Right. Yeah. 50.

Kiera Dent (18:35.918)

I mean, the thought of having those processors that can come into the operatories, like same day treatment is so easy. We're not taking the cards and walking them up front and then bringing it back to them. Like it's just normal. I mean, we think about going to restaurants and now there's like little Apple pay sitting at our booth, even if we have a server. We have innovated as a society and making sure practices do that. But Mark, the questions always come and this is why people don't switch processors. One is it's hard to break up with my current processor. So what do they do in that regard?

Mark Rasmussen (18:50.68)

Yeah.

Kiera Dent (19:04.846)

to break up with a processor in an easy way if they want to switch to Moolah.

Mark Rasmussen (19:10.168)

Great question. So the first thing that I, when we're talking to practices, what I always like to say, and cause it's exactly right, making a switch from, you know, your processor, your legacy processor to somebody else seems daunting. It's like, okay, this is going to be a pain. I got people got to learn my stuff. well, we always tell practices, I'm like, don't cancel your current processor. Like Pepsi, Pepsi challenges, right?

Don't disrupt anything, keep your current processor, try out Moolah, bring us into your practice, don't cancel your existing processor, and make sure you guys love it like we say you're gonna love it. I want them to feel comfortable. And that does a couple things. One is after two weeks and they hate us, then great, we can part with friends and we'll have the hardware picked up and they didn't change anything with their current provider. But if they love us like I believe they're gonna love us, well then great, that gave them, that gave the staff the peace of mind of knowing like, hey yeah, I've got this new system.

but I have my old system in place in case I don't remember how to do something. So not trying to time of like, hey, when should I close my old? When do I add in Moolah? Don't put yourself through that stress. Just add Moolah, try us out. And again, there's no contracts with us. So just bring us alongside, Pepsi challenges for a couple of weeks. And then when your staff and everybody's like, yeah, we love Moolah, cool. Then at that point, you can make arrangements with your processor to close that out.

Kiera Dent (20:17.454)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (20:36.344)

I can't can't to other processors, right? Because many of them have, you know, these long -term contracts and early termination fees. They'll have to course check with their vendor. But the good thing is that once you make that break and once you do come with Mula, Moolah, never have that worry again. There's no contracts with us. At any time, if anybody wants to close out their account, really easy to do business with us, really easy to not do business with us. Let us know. We'll have the hardware picked up at our expense and we'll wish each other well, you know? It's all good.

Kiera Dent (21:05.486)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (21:06.2)

So at least they can make that break and get out of the contracts and be with a company where they can truly be in a month to month environment.

Kiera Dent (21:14.67)

Which is amazing. And I think something that's really awesome is I was thinking about that. If you are in a long -term contract and you can't get out of it, Processing is only charging you on the fees that you do. You might have a monthly fee with the hot hardware that you did purchase, or that might be something you paid upfront. However, you can actually move almost all of your transactions over to Moolah while you wait for that contract to leave. And so just don't think that you have to wait until that contract ends. I do process on two different processors intentionally because I want to like,

Mark Rasmussen (21:35.928)

point.

Kiera Dent (21:43.726)

leave one and move to another one, but I'm debating because that's going to lead me to my next question about fees. I'm testing two companies currently myself, intentionally, but you can, you can move all your processing over to Moolah if you love them so much, even if you're in contract. So I want that to just be a note for you guys to be afraid of. Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (21:45.944)

Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (21:58.712)

Yes, good point. Yeah, exactly. And you know, in tip to your point there. Even even if you're going to, you know, not cancel the service, maybe that's going to relate to, you know, 20 $30 a month and just maintenance fees. And you're like, well, hey, that still makes sense rather than having to spend three or $400 termination fee. I'm just going to pay the monthly minimum, you know, for whatever it is that six months to take me to that contract term. Yeah, you don't have to wait, you can just kind of pay that minimum.

Kiera Dent (22:20.814)

Right.

Mark Rasmussen (22:27.32)

and then actually cancel it when you're not going to get hit with a termination fee. Yeah.

Kiera Dent (22:30.51)

sure. Yeah, so again, don't feel locked into it because they're going to want you to think you're locked, but it's a very minimal fee, especially if you love it. But something I am curious about, Mark, I feel I will just speak a little bit candidly about the industry. Credit card processors have a little bit of a reputation of being amazing at the beginning, and then they start tacking on all these stupid fees that I don't know, which is why there's companies like Merchant Advocate that come in and check and make sure that our processing fees are not too high. So walk me through processing freeze with Moolah.

because realistically that is always a scary thing when you switch processors. And I think that that's also another reason people don't want to switch. I love you. I love the things you do, but also are you charging me? Like right now I've got somebody who's like, Kiera, switch over to us and we'll be at 2 .9, which I still think is higher. I'd prefer it to be more like 2 .5 % processing fee, but they just sent me an email and I'm very disappointed because they're a very large company and I was so freaking pumped to use them. But they said,

In one year, so I'm like, you guys are smart. You want me to like get all my clients on this new processor. And then in one year, they're literally going to tack on this huge freaking fee on me. And I'm annoyed because it's going to be 10 bucks per transaction, like up to $10 per transaction indefinitely because they're now adding on this like stupid software. I feel annoyed by that. So I'm speaking very candidly. Tell me how your guys's fees work because obviously this is what people are going to be concerned about too. As much as I love you, I also make sure the fees make sense.

Mark Rasmussen (23:30.168)

Right.

Mark Rasmussen (23:41.976)

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Mark Rasmussen (23:50.132)

Yep. Yeah, exactly. So we're, we're all about simplicity, right? Like, we love technology, and we love simplicity. So we've been talking about technology, let's talk about simplicity. So you know, anybody out there who's listening to this, and you've seen a merchant account statement, right? Nine and a half, actually, yeah, nine and a half out of 10 times, you look at that merchant statement, that month end statements, it's your eyes will roll back, it's like,

line item after line item after line item of like miscellaneous fees like, okay, this visa fee, this interchange fee, this transaction fee, PCI fees, don't even get me started on PCI fees, but we'll come back to that. PCI fees, monthly minimums, annual fees. I mean, it's crazy. It's like way overcomplicated by design. Not only that, I run in and talk to a lot of practices where like, you know, it's funny.

Kiera Dent (24:19.978)

Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Kiera Dent (24:30.062)

They're sane.

Mark Rasmussen (24:44.664)

They're like, hey, I started engaging with you and then it had me look at my merchant processing again and my merchant processing statement that I just looked at and the pricing we're paying today is very different than it was when we signed up with them two years ago. So over these two years, they've been bumping up the rates unbeknownst to them. So, you know, with that being said, Moolah takes a very, you know, simple approach. With Moolah, you get, you know, our platform, you get our technology, right?

Kiera Dent (24:57.166)

Mm -hmm.

Right.

Mark Rasmussen (25:11.192)

There's no monthly SaaS fees or annual fees. There's no fees for the software, number one. The hardware, we're gonna provide the practice to brand new wireless smart terminals. They don't have to buy, rent, or lease those devices, they're included. Not only do we provide them the devices, but we also warranty them indefinitely, which is huge, because normally you're buying these devices, and normally it's like a 12 -month manufacturer's warranty. And then Murphy's Law kicks in half the time, and then it's like month 14, the device fails.

And then you're like, oops, sorry, you got to buy a new device. Whereas with Moolah, first of all, as mentioned, we give them the hardware, but we're warranting them indefinitely, even beyond hardware failure, even accidental damage we will cover. So a practice that comes on board with us, three years later, they call us like, hey, we accidentally dropped the device off the counter and broke, cracked the screen. We'll cover that. Just give us a call. We'll provision replacement. We'll overnight it. So practices that do, you know, processing with Moolah.

totally are future -proofing themselves of ever having hardware expense again. Okay? So no fees on the software, no fees on the hardware. So then it comes down to we make our revenue on the merchant processing. And we've done that. And I think is a really fair, simple and straightforward approach. It breaks down to this. There's literally two fees that a Moolah practice will have when they do business with us. One rate, which is 2 .49 % flat rate for anything that's done in practice.

Kiera Dent (26:17.582)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (26:35.416)

And it doesn't matter whether it's an Amex or a Visa or a Mashcard Discover, the card type doesn't matter. If it's done in person, it's 2 .49%. There's not a transaction fee on top of that. Normally, you'll see like 10 or 20 cents per transaction. None of that, just 2 .49. And then that same logic carries over for any of the card not present transactions. So that would be 2 .99 % for anything that's done, you know, text to pay, the website payment.

Kiera Dent (26:47.95)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (27:01.304)

So it's literally only those two pricing elements. 2 .49 on transactions are done in practice, 2 .99 where the card is not present, nothing else. And so, you know, when I say nothing else, literally nothing else. So we're eliminating all the kind of miscellaneous fees that we were talking about earlier. The statement fees, the interchange fees, PCI fees. This is a crowd favorite. So not only do we remove the PCI fees, right? And I'm sorry to the rest of my industry.

Kiera Dent (27:19.278)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (27:30.552)

peers, but this is the truth. PCI is a complete racket. It's become a financial racket to processors of looking to extract more revenue. So we look at PCI where there not only is there never a fee with Moolah on a PCI fee, but we take care of all the tasks. No longer does the practice have to do that once a year self -assessment questionnaire. No longer do they need to deal with quarterly scans. It's

Kiera Dent (27:35.694)

Yeah.

Kiera Dent (27:51.05)

Thank you.

Mark Rasmussen (27:58.04)

All the PCI elements are managed on the practices behalf. So they never have a PCI fee or a task to do as long as they're with Moolah, which people love. So, and again, as I already mentioned, there's no annual fees, there's no contracts. This is 249 .299. And to really hit that home, as we were talking about previously of like, hey, somebody just trying out Moolah, right? So if you're trying us out, let's say you sign up with Moolah, we send you the hardware.

Kiera Dent (28:07.854)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (28:26.264)

but you didn't get around to actually switching over and then the month goes by. Well, guess what? You would have zero expense from Moolah. If you didn't process any payments from us, nothing's gonna kick in. There's no minimums, there's no statement fees, none of that. So if you didn't process a credit card payment, you would have zero expense from us. So, you know, expense is truly driven from when you process credit card transactions and that's it. So really simple, right? And really straightforward and, you know,

Kiera Dent (28:50.638)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (28:53.304)

people can get around and knowing what this costs because again, we wear our pricing on our sleeve. There's no surprises. We don't play that game of like teaser rates and then a couple of months kind of sneak in a little message and hope nobody notices and increase the rate. Those rates are gonna be as they are. There's no intention of increasing them.

Kiera Dent (29:06.446)

Yep.

Kiera Dent (29:12.142)

Yeah, and it's interesting as you're saying that, Mark, I pulled up one of my processing fees. So I'm just curious, because this is what I'm seeing. So tell me, what things are actually nonsense versus what are real? Line item, it says two, visa never approved domestic. What does that even mean?

Mark Rasmussen (29:28.728)

So that's referring to an interchange element. So here's the first thing we'll say. Interchange, which is basically the wholesale cost from, you know, not to bore everybody, your audience, but you've got two sides of the equation in credit cards. You have the card issuers, which are patients banks, you know, from their Citibank Visa or their Capital One Visa. And then you have the acquiring banks, which represent the merchants. So interchange is what the card issuers charge the acquiring banks when their customers present their card to their merchants. That's interchange.

Kiera Dent (29:36.078)

Mm -hmm.

Mark Rasmussen (29:58.776)

And so interchange consists of hundreds and hundreds of different card types with different price points. And so whether it was a Visa, vanilla, you know, plain Visa card, was it a debit card, was it a rewards card, was it a corporate card? So all these variations of interchange expense and there's all these nuances of different fees related to that. Now, listen, these elements happen, doesn't matter who your processor is, all these elements are happening with Moolah in the backend, but we just absorb it all. And so,

Kiera Dent (30:10.286)

Great.

Mark Rasmussen (30:28.408)

Even though we're very simple in our rates to the practice, make no qualms about it. We're not any different. There's a lot of elements behind the scenes of different expenses that are happening non -domestically. You were talking about rewards, downgrades, all these things are happening behind the scenes. But to our practices, they don't care about that. And they don't need to worry about that. They know that if they do it in their practice, it's 249. And if they do it as a Cardinal President, it's 299.

Don't worry about anything else. We're managing all that behind the scenes.

Kiera Dent (30:58.798)

That's awesome. Yeah, because as I'm looking at this statement, I'm like, interesting. I didn't know I had a monthly service fee that has been added on a fixed acquire network fee, another AXP system processing fee that's quite substantial. And I'm like, none of those things were on there prior when I originally signed up. And so I was like, hey. Hey. And so it's interesting.

Mark Rasmussen (31:14.872)

You're like, that wasn't on this, that wasn't on my sign up form. I don't remember seeing that. All right, well, we need to talk after the podcast and get you guys over to Moolah, right?

Kiera Dent (31:22.574)

I know. Okay, I know. So anyway, that's what I wanted to point out to you guys is like me even looking at this right now, like as listening to the podcast with Mark, like double, I mean, you probably saw my eyes shift over because I was like, what the heck? I got all these fees sitting over here. But what's crazy is I've kind of hovered around this like 2 .9 % for all the time. But I just knew that they were tacking on fees and I had to do this like, my gosh, Mark, we really want to bore people. I had to do all these like

compliance things and they had me do this whole thing to get my rates down and I'm still not but I'm in this higher compliance area. All this nonsense. But anyway, beyond that, I think everybody should use moolah. So I think for modernized payments, I think for the 2 .49, that's insane. Like people are all talking about what are ways that we can save costs on our overhead. Well, get your processing fee down to 2 .49 in practice, you're going to be substantially lower. And then the other ones are 2 .9, which is still lower than what most are at most around three.

Mark Rasmussen (31:54.424)

Right. Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (32:00.216)

Thanks.

Kiera Dent (32:17.326)

I would usually see about 2 .5 to 3 .3 is typically what I'm seeing for fees, not to mention all the additional add -ons and also having to pay for your process. So if an office, let's say they've got two of these, but they want more, they're a really large practice, do they pay extra for an additional terminal? I would assume yes, because you guys complimentary too, do they pay for extra terminals?

Mark Rasmussen (32:23.64)

Yep. Yep.

Mark Rasmussen (32:38.424)

They do. So we provide them two, if they want additional devices, it's $30 a month for those additional devices. If they're a larger practice, you know, you sweet talk us a little bit. Well, we have been known to include an extra device or two if it's a larger practice. So, yeah, exactly. Talk to the team. But the short of it is that if the practice is joined more than $60 ,000 a month,

Kiera Dent (32:45.517)

Wow, awesome, very easy.

Kiera Dent (32:55.214)

So, you know, do a little good sales pitch to Mark over here.

Mark Rasmussen (33:08.44)

and they need additional devices, we're usually pretty flexible about providing those additional devices.

Kiera Dent (33:14.51)

Do you guys ever do reduced pricing at all if a practice is doing large amounts per month? Or is it just like, this is what it is? I was curious, because I know there's a lot that do hire amounts.

Mark Rasmussen (33:20.248)

We do, we do. We do. So matter of fact, so we have the 249 .299 is our wrap rate for dentists. Any practices that come through one of our partnerships, those come in at a reduced rate. And then we have even a lower tier if the practice is multi -practice as multi -locations. So definitely inquire with us.

about those, you know, reduce rates if you're with any of our partners. And yeah, a lot of them. You know, the other thing I was going to mention, just because this is kind of exciting and new for us, and it's crazy how much this has been, practices have been asking about this over the last 12 months. The question that a lot of practices come to us and ask, and they say, is there any way that I can offload my credit card processing fee to the patient?

Kiera Dent (33:50.702)

for sure.

Kiera Dent (34:11.982)

Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious on this.

Mark Rasmussen (34:15.096)

A year ago, we would get that request one out of 10 times. Today, we get that request like seven or eight out of 10 times. So like the cats out of the bag, like people want that. So I'm happy to announce that we just went into beta on being able to offer compliant surcharging. And so you'll be able to practice what they'd like to, they'll be able to offload the credit card processing fee, both in practice and any of the card not present activity, the text to pay, the website payment.

Kiera Dent (34:22.35)

Mm -hmm. Agreed.

Mark Rasmussen (34:44.792)

you'll be able to offload the credit card processing fee onto the patient. That only does on the credit cards. You're not allowed to do that on the debit cards, right? Debit cards, there's no additional fee to the patient, but if they're paying with a credit card, you'll be able to offload the credit card processing fee to them. And the nice thing with that Moolah is that not only are we giving them the capability to do that, but we're also handling that surcharge amount correctly in the PMS when we're posting into it from an accounting perspective and keeping that clean. Yeah.

Kiera Dent (34:54.03)

Mm -hmm.

Kiera Dent (35:10.538)

amazing because agreed I think that's a big piece. I mean when I look at my credit card processing fees a year I'm like we're in the upwards higher like it's almost like another employee when you look at that annual amount that you're paying credit card processing fees and so I just think it's a really awesome way I really love you guys mark. That's why you guys are a sponsor of ours this year That's why you guys are a partner of ours And so definitely everybody let them know that you came from the Dental A Team podcast mark How do people connect with you because I think people should modernize their payments?

Mark Rasmussen (35:19.832)

Yeah. Yeah, no doubt.

Kiera Dent (35:39.47)

I just feel like would you continue purchasing from Amazon if you had to send them a paper check? The answer's hard pass, no. Would you continue working with Amazon if you couldn't shop at night on them? The answer is no. Would you continue working? And I understand that Amazon does not feel like a dental office, but I'm like, I wouldn't continue seeing my therapist or all these different people. It's so archaic when you go to other even medical professionals that don't take Apple Pay. I'm like, what, you don't take Apple Pay?

Like, what are you doing? Like, everybody takes Apple Pay. Everybody does the tap pay. Why am I still having to insert my card or write you a check or give you my card? Like, it just feels so archaic. And I love, Marc, you guys truly have modernized it and it's not hard. And I love that it's very simple and that people can try you out, see if they like you, but offices that are using you that I know love you. So how can offices get Moolah in their practice? Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (36:05.976)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (36:27.32)

Cool. I would recommend if any practice that's interested in learning more about us is, and maybe Kiera in this podcast and description or something, put a link for, because we have preferred pricing for Dental A Team clients. And so I would just take a look at that link that's probably associated with this podcast. And on that page, you guys can go ahead and schedule a time. It's convenient for you to do a demo. And so I think a demo is the, is the,

Kiera Dent (36:40.43)

course.

Mark Rasmussen (36:57.176)

best natural step for any of your listeners that want to know more about Moolah. And again, schedule that demo and we'll run them through and show them all of the features, all the benefits, and then assist them with getting signed up at that preferred rate that they'll get through Dental A Team.

Kiera Dent (37:15.182)

Amazing Mark. And I just like, you know, I love to like sweeten it a smidgey for you guys. So let's just do a hypothetical, a practice is processing a million a year. Okay. And they are just paying that extra half a percentage mark, right? That would be pretty simple. Right? So, you know, if you guys are just paying that extra half a percentage, I'm doing this on a million. That's a $50 ,000. It's insanity to me of how much you guys are saving. Did I do my math right?

Mark Rasmussen (37:24.632)

Yeah.

Mark Rasmussen (37:29.592)

Yeah? Yeah?

Mark Rasmussen (37:40.216)

Right? Yeah.

Kiera Dent (37:44.654)

Or is it less than that? A million and we're doing, I lied to you guys. $5 ,000, $5 ,000 just on a half percentage, five grand, which might not seem like enough for you guys to go after. Five grand just by switching processors that you would be saving every year, just on a million dollar practice that you process. That's like, and you probably listen, yes, just the rate.

Mark Rasmussen (37:49.048)

We said a half a percent.

Right. Right.

Mark Rasmussen (38:04.344)

And you're just talking the rate. And you're just talking about the rate. What about all the other miscellaneous fees that they're probably paying as well? So it's going to be more than five grand. And I feel very strongly that they would be improving their experience on a daily basis with the technology. So not only are you saving on the rate, but you're just improving your day -to -day experience with payments. It's kind of a win -win.

Kiera Dent (38:13.39)

Yes, but right alone!

Kiera Dent (38:22.062)

I love you, Clint.

Kiera Dent (38:29.55)

And as a team member, I have way less I've got to do. I don't have to remember. I've got a drip campaign. I can have them pay on that. I'm not sending statements anymore. So those costs in and of themselves. So I'm just saying, like, for a million dollar practice, it's a guarantee, probably $5 ,000 savings for you just on the rate, let alone everything else. So I think it's worthwhile to schedule that demo. So Mark, thanks for being on the podcast today.

Mark Rasmussen (38:51.224)

It was awesome. Thank you so much for allowing us to be there We're so glad to be a sponsor and be with you guys. You guys are rock stars. So appreciate you

Kiera Dent (38:58.03)

Amazing. Well, for all of you listening, guys, don't be like, take the effort, go look into this. It will save you so much money and your team will be happier. Definitely reach out and for all of you listening, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.