Our seamlessly integrated Online Payments system in SimplePractice offers an easy way to process all major credit, debit, FSA, and HSA cards at a rate of 3.15% + $0.30 for each successful transaction.

Note: If you already have your Online Payments account set up, see our guide on using Online Payments for processing credit cards for next steps.

In this guide, we'll cover:

• Benefits to using our Online Payments system
• Supported business types
• Setting up your Online Payments account
• Verifying your account and next steps
  • What happens next?
    

Benefits to using our Online Payments system

The most important criteria we considered when building our Online Payments feature was security and pricing. It's fully PCI-compliant, gives you the ability to store cards securely, and saves you time because you don't have to manually enter payments. If you have the Client Portal enabled, your clients can log in to make payments directly from their Client Portal.

Once your account is up and running, you won't have to worry about using card readers or terminals, as all transactions are processed directly through SimplePractice.

Important: Credit card information should only be stored within the designated payment fields in your SimplePractice account. Storing this information outside of these fields, or in any other manner, means you acknowledge the risk associated with storing this data within your account. For more information, see Adding a card to a client’s profile.

Supported business types

SimplePractice is partnered with a third party payment processor to provide a secure, integrated payment processing solution for our customers. In order to comply with our partner’s regulations, SimplePractice isn’t able to support or facilitate payments for business types outside of the health and wellness industry.  

Supported business types include: 

• Behavioral Health Therapy, including:
  • Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LICSW) (MSW) (LCSW)
  • Psychologists (PhD)
  • Psychiatrists 
  • Licensed Mental Health Counselors (LMHC)
  • Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFT)
  • Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselors (LADC)
  • Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA)
  • National Certified Counselor (NCC)
• Occupational Therapy 
• Speech Language Pathology 
• Dietitians 
• Nutritionists
• Yoga Instructors
• Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy
• Acupuncture
• Professional/Life Coaching
• Dentistry
• Physical Therapy
• Chiropractic
• Massage Therapy

If your business type isn’t included in this list, our Underwriting team will work with our processing partner to review your Online Payments account and determine if we’re able to support payment processing for your business. As part of this review, our team may reach out to request additional information to help determine if your services are supported. 

Our team will follow up with the status of your Online Payments account once additional review is complete. 

Important: We recommend refraining from processing Online Payments until our Underwriting team has verified your Online Payments account. If our team is unable to verify your account for any reason, you’ll be required to issue refunds for any transactions processing during that time. 

See our payment processor’s Prohibited and Restricted Businesses List for additional services that aren’t supported. Please note that this isn’t an exhaustive list of all restricted services. 

Setting up your Online Payments account

To get started, navigate to Settings > Payment processing > Online payments and follow the steps below to set up your account and learn about our verification process:

• Email and mobile phone verification
• Business Details
• Bank Details
• Business Representatives and Beneficial Owners

Email and mobile phone verification

To sign up for your Online Payments account, you'll first need to verify your email and mobile phone number. Click Send Verification Email to receive an email verification to your email address on file.

Once you verify your account from the email, you'll be prompted to choose whether you'd like to receive a mobile security code through a call or a text. Click Call Me to receive a call, or click Text Me to receive a text message.

Once you choose your verification method and receive the code to your phone, you'll be prompted to input that code in the pop-up window that appears. After you enter your code, click Confirm Code.

Tip: If you're not receiving the requested security code via text, it may be that you previously opted out of receiving text messages from our text message provider. In these cases, we recommend using the Call Me option to receive the code in a phone call.

Note: If the number that appears is not your mobile phone number, please update your Basic Info with the correct number.

Business Details

• Business type
  • Select the choice that best reflects your business type:
    • Sole proprietor/Individual
    • Corporation
    • LLC
    • Non-Profit

Important: Depending on your business type, you may be required to complete an additional form to provide details about the financial management of your practice. If your business is a Non-Profit, Corporation, or LLC, see the section on Business Representatives and Beneficial Owners for more information.

• Business name 
• Country
  • Select the country where the account representative resides or that the business is legally established.
    • For example, if you are in the United States and the business or user you’re creating an account for is legally represented in Canada, use Canada as the country for the account being created.

Important: Once set, the country cannot be changed.

• EIN (US) or Business Number (CA)
  • Your Employer Identification Number (EIN) is a unique nine-digit number assigned by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
  • Your Business Number (BN) is a unique nine-digit number assigned by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
• Statement descriptor
  • This is the information that will show on your clients' bank statements. Use the name for your business that your clients will recognize to help prevent unintended chargebacks. 
    • Enter between 5 and 22 characters.
    • Must contain at least 5 letters.
    • Cannot use special characters, such as <, >, \, ', ", .
    • Note: The Statement descriptor should be representative of your business. Please do not use “Stripe” or “Stripe Payments” as your Statement descriptor.
  • If you don’t enter a Statement descriptor, it’ll default to SimplePractice LLC.

Note: Disputes are forced transaction reversals that are initiated by the cardholder’s bank. They are meant to serve as a consumer protection mechanism. To learn more, see Credit card processing: Steps to take when a client disputes a charge. 

• Business address 

Bank Details

Depending on the business type you choose when signing up for an Online Payments account, our integrated processor has different requirements for the bank account that you provide for payouts. Meeting these requirements is important to avoid unexpected delays to your payouts. You can refer to these requirements below:

Sole proprietorships or Single-Member LLCs

• Your bank account must be either a personal bank account registered under your Business Representative's name, or a business bank account registered under your business DBA.
  
  • If creating an account under your SSN, you can add your personal bank account or business bank account

LLCs, Corporations, and Non-Profits

• Your bank account must be registered under either your business's legal name or DBA. 
  • If creating an account under an EIN, the business account on file has to match your business name or DBA. If it's registered under your Business Representative's name instead, it may be flagged by our processor. This can result in delays to your payouts.

Note: This must be a checking account and not a savings account.

With this information in mind, you can review the section below for an overview of what bank account information will be requested from you when entering your bank account details for your Online Payments account.

• For CA businesses
  • Currency
    • USD or CAD
• Account holder name
• Based on your business location, enter the following:
  • Note: This information is typically found on checks provided by your bank.
  • For US businesses
    • Routing number
    • Account number 
    • Confirm account number
  • For CA businesses
    • Transit number
    • Institution number
    • Account number
    • Confirm account number

Note: This must be a checking account and not a savings account.

Business Representatives and Beneficial Owners

If the business type you've selected is a Non-Profit, Corporation, or LLC, you will be prompted to complete an additional form hosted by our payment processor. This form will ask you to provide additional information about the financial management of your practice.

This form must be completed by a Business Representative of your practice. A Business Representative should be an executive, senior manager, or someone who otherwise has significant responsibility for the control and management of the business. If this does not describe yourself, you will need to ask the Business Representative to complete the form.

• Non-Profit business types will be required to enter the last 4 digits of their Social Security number or provide a government issued ID number. 
• Business Representatives for Corporation and LLC business types will need to enter the last 4 digits of their Social Security number or a government issued ID number and will need to declare any additional Beneficial Owners. A Beneficial Owner is considered any person who owns 25% or more of the business. 

Be prepared to have this information readily available when completing this form for your practice. 

Note: This form will not be required for Sole proprietor/Individual business types.

Tip: For existing accounts that need to declare information regarding Beneficial Owners, see our guide: Updating your Online Payments Beneficial Owners information FAQs.

Verifying your account and next steps

This verification is used to confirm your identity and protect you from identity theft. Please upload a copy of a valid government-issued ID. Once it has been reviewed, you will be able to receive payouts.

You can choose to upload one of the following by dragging or browsing for a file to upload:

• Passport
• Driver's license
• Identity card

Your file must meet these requirements:

• Copy of identification must be in color
• Image must be in good quality and legible
• File size limit is 5 MB
• File types supported: JPG, JPEG, and PNG

Note: If you experience any difficulties with uploading your ID, we recommend clearing your cache and making sure your browser is fully updated. If this doesn’t resolve it, please submit a help request for further assistance.

After you're able to upload your file, review our payment processor’s Terms and Conditions, check the box confirming that you've read and accept the Terms and Conditions, and press Save.

What happens next?

Once you've successfully entered the required information, there are three states that your account can go into:

• Verified
  • We'll send you an email letting you know that your account has been verified.
•  Pending
  • On average, it takes 2-3 business days to get verified.
  • You may need to provide additional information, but we'll reach out and let you know if this is the case.
• Unverified
  • We'll reach out and let you know what other actions need to be taken.

Important: The security of your account and data are our top priority. We've implemented various mechanisms to alert us when there might be suspicious activity in your account. In most cases, our team is able to quickly verify your account activity and remove the alert. If your account needs to be reverified, you can rest assured that your account is being carefully reviewed. If you have any questions, you can submit a request, and we'll be glad to work with you.